American Computational Technical Services was incorporated in New York in 1984. For our first few years in business, we existed solely as a classical technical services firm. Our customers used us to supplement their efforts by calling on our technical expertise and thus leverage the results produced by their own staffs. We were never a "job shop", and in fact obtained some of our clients thru job shops. Instead, we functioned as what our President likes to describe as a hired gun. We got called into action when our clients encountered technical difficulties that they could not meet in-house within the time or budgetary constraints imposed on them. Altho we have done many kinds of work, our focus has usually been in the broad field of software engineering, with special emphasis on systems integration, math modeling, and system software (executives and operating systems).
In time, our role changed to include consulting services. Rather than our clients using us only to augment their technical team, they began to solicit our participation in their software design activities, and in almost every case we would participate in the implementation of these designs. We still functioned as hired guns, but this new facet gave us far greater insight into our client's needs, allowing us to serve our clients in many more ways than had hitherto been possible.
In the past several years, we have become heavily involved in database programming and that has become a very major part of our business.
During this growth process, we began to expand into other types of work. Although we still do the major part of our work in such high-tech fields as flight simulation, we have never been reluctant to work in other areas. We take pride in the work we have done in accounting and payroll applications. This diversity of work has smoothed the rough road we sometimes faced in days past when budget cuts would reduce our workload. It has also given us a great appreciation of the needs of users of our products. While those working in more glamorous fields such as avionics or flight simulation may find the stress they feel from a rapidly-approaching deadline to be almost more than they can bear, we learned from these other types of work what real stress involves. A customer who has, in the process of running through a cycle of programs, mangled a database of employees in an attempt to get out the company's payroll today and it's already 3:00 in the afternoon makes you appreciate what a deadline truly can be. Such customers have limited budgets for software maintenance, so we learned to consider our customer's bottom lines in making recommendations and in designing software.
Today's American Computational bears little resemblence to the fledgling company that opened in 1984. Although still small by any standard, we have attracted a highly skilled staff that delights in anticipating a customer's needs and finding cost-effective means of satisfying them. We have now begun to create our own line of software. The diversity of that line reflects the diversity of our corporate history. It includes very high tech items, such as a portable operating system for embedded processors (called GHOST ), but also includes a data conversion utility for address book files (called PConvert ), along with other programs we wrote originally for internal use but are now taking into the marketplace.
However, we have not abandoned our work as hired guns, and revel in that role. American Computational has many technical interests. One of those interests may serve your purposes. To contact us, drop a line to our President Mike Miedlar . He'll be delighted to discuss ways that we can help you meet your needs.