Mathematical consulting and programming service

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The Mathematical consulting and programming services GmbH , later mbp Software & Systems GmbH , in short mbp , was the first software company in Europe. It was founded on February 26, 1957 by fourteen companies in Dortmund .

The founders were:

The mathematician Hans Konrad Schuff had the idea of ​​founding this company at the time , and he found strong supporters in the head of the Dortmund employment office, Gerhard Ahl, and the Dortmund Chamber of Commerce. A short time later, the management team was supplemented by Hans-Gerd Pärli , who took on the company's external presentation. The first company headquarters was at Kleppingstrasse 26 in Dortmund; mbp was based there until 1978, when it moved to Semerteichstrasse 47-49.

Schuff recognized that the development of the computer by Konrad Zuse opened up new possibilities for calculating statics, electrical vibrations and mathematical equations. At that time there were only a few "commercial" computer manufacturers, such as the German Zuse KG or UNIVAC and IBM from the USA.

The Hörder Hüttenunion placed the first order to convert punch card technology to computers. In 1959, DM 46,000 was turned over with 22 employees, in 1961 already DM 940,000 with 36 employees. In 1971, Hoesch AG from Dortmund took over the shares of all co-founders.

Mbp has been developing a COBOL compiler since the late 1960s, which was sold from the late 1980s with the trademark Visual until the 1990s.

Successful products followed in the 1980s, such as the Teletex controller ("The Yellow of the Egg"), software for BTX access via analog modems, CAD systems, the first ISDN cards, the office communication software "ALIS", the Pipe statics program ROHR2 and much more with a total of approx. 750 employees. Many successful projects were carried out at authorities and institutes such as the Bundeswehr, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the Federal Motor Transport Authority, the Federal Border Police, the Federal Ministry of Transport, Deutsche Telekom (at that time still Deutsche Bundespost) and numerous commercial enterprises.

As a particularly innovative company at the time, mbp - with the support of the parent company Hoesch AG - also committed itself to promoting communication between the state, science and business. An event in 1988 can serve as an example. Together with the Cologne Foundation for Communication Research in the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft , mbp organized a conference on the topics of monetary policy, environmental protection and economic policy at the Bonn-Bad Godesberg Science Center with a mix of speakers from federal politics, journalism and science; Content contributions were made by Hans Matthöfer , Klaus Töpfer , Fides Krause-Brewer , Carl Christian von Weizsäcker , Volker Hauff and Otto Schlecht .

In 1992, mbp was sold by the Krupp company , which Hoesch had taken over a short time before, to EDS , an IT consulting and service company from the USA with around 100,000 employees worldwide at the time.

In 1998 EDS moved to a new building at Semerteichstrasse 50–52. Until April 24, 2008, some former mbp employees were still working in information technology there, then EDS gave up the Dortmund location and moved to Essen. After the purchase of EDS by Hewlett-Packard in 2009, some former mbp employees are still employed at HP / HPE today (2016).

Plaque

On September 24, 2016, in the presence of many long-serving mbp employees, a memorial plaque was unveiled at the house at Kleppingstrasse 26, which commemorates the company's first headquarters.

literature

  • Foundation for Communication Research : Crisis Management or Opportunity Management ?. Working conference of the Foundation for Communication Research in conjunction with mbp Software & Systems GmbH, Dortmund. Shorthand transcript October 28, 1988 . Cologne: Greven & Bechtold, 1988, without ISBN.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Foundation for Communication Research : Crisis Management or Opportunity Management? , Cologne, 1988, p. 5 ff.