314:(TDF) was a series of TSO applications that took users through the creation of their screens. It had been decided from the beginning that the TDF would be written with TELON itself. Christensen would later remark that this helped guarantee that TELON would be a robust system because developers would be forced to use it. It also gave CSI ideas for ways to improve productivity.
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because it was much less expensive than its main competitors at the time, Informatics' Mark V and IBM's application generator, and was, therefore, not taken seriously. In 1982, TELON for IMS was being sold for $ 75,000 so CSI raised the price to $ 95,000 to give it more credibility. The price of the CICS offering was also increased. Two years later, after it was acquired by
483:
In 1986, Pansophic
Transferred Farzin Yashar from their development team in Reston, VA to Boston in order to head development of the first PC version of TELON TDF. Farzin and Chris McNeil together led the efforts and created Telon PC for PC DOS/MS-DOS, which was distributed on floppy diskettes. The
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they had acquired, Pansophic became impressed with the enthusiasm of TELON customers. In March 1984, they began discussions with CSI to purchase the company. Christensen came away believing that
Pansophic knew the market and customers for TELON. In April 1984 Pansophic made an offer of $ 2 million
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Because TELON generated fully independent COBOL code, the resulting applications could be maintained by traditional methods (i.e. "by hand") if CSI were ever to become insolvent. This made the decision to purchase TELON less risky for those companies that were given a trial since they would not have
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Christensen and McNeil spent the following few years working on the next claims processing application. McNeil designed the template COBOL programs and
Christensen coded the macros to generate the actual COBOL programs. They created a system that could generate COBOL code from screen layouts created
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screen and then to convert the screens for executing on the 3790. It was awkward to use (McNeil called it "distributed head-ache") and so
Christensen used the Macro language to create a generator that could create each form from a single source. This was the first step leading to the development of
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When it was obvious that TELON was becoming a successful product and that CSI was a stable company, Liberty Mutual became the fourth customer by the end of 1981. They were able to use the software for free but later signed a support agreement. In a fitting tribute, both the original
Liberty Mutual
212:
In 1981 Don
Christensen was introduced to Phil Stymfal, a software engineer who was in charge of technical decisions at New England Life Insurance (NELI). Stymfal immediately saw the advantages of ADS and was unafraid to try new products. He recommended that NELI purchase TELON and NELI became the
438:
The main asset of TELON was that it worked; customers were able to see immediate returns on their investment in the software. In the early years, when TELON was cheaper, it would take only one project for a customer to break even. Even after the price increases, companies could recoup their costs
236:
With four major customers by early 1982, CSI hired
Stymfal as the second employee to work alongside McNeil. Stymfal's role was as Director of Development and he, together with McNeil, made most of the technological decisions regarding TELON until their departure in 1987. By this point, Christensen
228:
Not long before the NELI contract, Christensen left
Liberty Mutual to start his own company. Since ADS had been written on Liberty Mutual's mainframe, Christensen left with the understanding that if Liberty ever decided to use TELON it could acquire the software free of charge. Christensen Systems
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interactive environment and it allowed the users and engineers to test screen flow. When a user wanted a change, the layout was altered using a design tool and new COBOL was generated. This turned out to be a very successful way to prototype the new system. Liberty Mutual put out a bid to create
475:
The acquisition became a successful one for both companies. TELON gained the advantages of a large and experienced sales force, run by
Pansophic's Al Syler, who had previously sold Informatics' Mark IV. In return, Pansophic gained a strong product with sales that would continue to climb for many
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minicomputer along with a claims processing system (CAPS) created by
Insurance Systems of America. Christensen worked with McNeil on a project that customized the package for use at Liberty Mutual. This customization, which involved IBM's cumbersome Macro language, required an engineer to create
446:
This is in direct contrast to the two main competitors of the time, Informatics' Mark V and IBM's application generator. Mark V was an add-on to Informatics' successful report generator Mark IV but it was unwieldy and didn't address as much of the development lifecycle as TELON. IBM's solution
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code that can run natively in the target environment without run-time proprietary code. Developers create screen designs in the TELON Design Facility (TDF) and define attributes for the screen. The design can then be run through a prototyper to test screen flow. Next, macros generate the code
417:
Almost all of the early sales for TELON were generated through Phil Stymfal's contacts with other insurance companies. These contacts gave CSI a chance to give a demo at the companies which usually ended in a sale. Companies outside of Stymfal's circle were reluctant to look at TELON perhaps
479:
One of the first things Pansophic did was to raise the price of TELON to match its competitors. The IMS product was increased from $ 95,000 per license to $ 225,000 and the CICS product was raised from $ 50,000 to $ 160,000. This gave TELON the credibility to compete head-to-head with their
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transaction environment. He then tried to persuade Liberty Mutual management to use the expanded system to generate a new application that Liberty Mutual was working on. The conservative management balked at using an untried system for mission-critical applications and declined. In 1981,
459:
In 1983 CSI pursued multiple avenues for acquiring venture capital, all which proved unsuccessful. By this time new competitors to TELON had emerged, in particular, a system from Sage Software, and Giel was becoming concerned that CSI's sales force was not sufficient to stay ahead of the
272:
The ease with which CSI was able to attract its first four customers caused a lack of urgency in pursuing further sales. Christensen did not create a large enough sales pipeline to keep up the growth, creating a lull in sales. This would later contribute to the decision to sell CSI to
496:
database system. 2.0 was plagued by delays, revolving management, and was released in 1987 with many bugs. As a result, TELON lost some of its market share and almost lost its lead in the industry. It took a few years before TELON was again considered a solid product.
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Despite the continued success of TELON, Pansophic began to lose money. In 1990, Pansophic lost over $ 14 million and cut more than 300 workers, decreasing its workforce to 1,214. With its large installed customer base, this made Pansophic an attractive target for
425:
In 1982 CSI was able to secure $ 100,000 in working capital from the Boston area consulting firm Computer Partners in exchange for the exclusive right to bring TELON into Boston area companies. A year later CSI bought out its commitment by securing a loan from
216:
When the system proved itself at NELI, Stymfal used his connections through The New England Productivity Group to generate more interest in TELON. Through these contacts Christensen was able to sign two more Boston-area customers to $ 30k license agreements:
229:
Inc. was created soon after the NELI signing and its first employee was Chris McNeil, who had worked with Christensen back at Liberty Mutual before moving to Cape Cod. His responsibilities included supporting NELI and to continuing work on TELON.
525:
TELON was renamed CA-TELON and the development group was slashed by about 60%. This began a long, profitable time for CA as it maintained and updated TELON for its customers. In October 2006, CA announced the release of CA-Telon 5.0.
447:
required a run-time component for the generated applications to execute, putting the customer in a long-term bind with IBM. Both products were much more expensive than TELON and head-to-head trials proved TELON to be more productive.
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had not yet been created and the system was still being called by its generic name, ADS. Casual research was done to come up with a name. Christensen was drawn to using Greek works and originally explored using
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TELON gave a standard structure and design to all the applications written with it. Developers could easily understand the design of any TELON application once he or she was familiar with the TELON methodology.
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competition. One of the venture capitalists who had been contacted suggested that TELON would be a good fit with Pansophic Systems because they had a strong and effective sales force.
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For a short period in the late 1980s, Pansophic marketed a product known as Telon/38, targeted at the IBM System/38 platform. Telon/38 was a rebranded version of the Synon/2 tool from
472:
in addition to royalties for three years. The quartet of Christensen, McNeil, Stymfal, and Giel decided to accept the offer and the deal became realized in November 1984.
241:, and developer Gig Kirk was hired in September. In October Bob Giel, an acquaintance of Stymfal, was hired as Director of Finance to handle business and sales planning.
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572:
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CAPS system and second claims processing applications that McNeil and Christensen worked on while employed at Liberty Mutual were rewritten using TELON.
225:. Christensen has stated that TELON might never have been successful without Stymfal's influence and his confidence in recommending an untried product.
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years. A few years after the deal, Christensen was told by an industry observer that no software merger had ever gone as smoothly or productively.
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Christensen expanded the macros for the system (which he was calling ADS at the time—Application Development System) to generate COBOL for IBM's
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won in 1979. Christensen then left IBM to work as a private consultant for Liberty Mutual. When Liberty Mutual moved their offices to
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TELON 2.0 was the first major release of TELON after it was acquired by Pansophic. Among other things, it added support for IBM's
85:
17:
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50:(formerly CA, Inc. and Computer Associates International, Inc.). When it was introduced in 1981, it was one of the first
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and the multiple steps of evolutionary development. A local graphic designer was then hired to draw it professionally.
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TELON was originally conceived and designed by Chris McNeil and Don Christensen in the late 1970s when McNeil was a
546:
593:
119:
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using the information created by the TDF. Lastly, the TELON Test Facility is used, in conjunction with code
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253:(Greek for "purpose" or "goal") but it was already utilized by a software company in California. Finally
238:
115:
35:
464:
265:(forever). McNeil created a draft of the TELON logo, using eight concentric circles to represent an
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Through 1982–83 development of TELON would continue with additional features being added including:
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at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and Christensen was an IBM Systems Engineer contracting with
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Christensen started to look outside of Liberty Mutual for potential customers for ADS.
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Original TELON logo, showing the eight concentric circles representing an octave.
509:. Years later, Synon/2 also came to be acquired by CA and is now known as CA 2E.
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first commercial customer by signing a license agreement for $ 30k in mid-1981.
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had moved into more of a sales and marketing position. An office was opened in
558:
139:, to search for and fix bugs before the application is moved into production.
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TELON is an application development system currently sold and maintained by
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By this time TELON itself was starting to become a large application. The
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competitors and made them the choice of companies about half the time.
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422:, TELON would see another price increase for much the same reasons.
54:("CASE") tools on the commercial market. The developer tools run on
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in 1969. In 1983 while doing background research on EASYTRIEVE, a
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in that year, McNeil left the company to study classical guitar on
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Interviews with Christensen, Kirk, McNeil, et al. in 2006. See
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product was launched in 1987 and became an immediate success.
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Pansophic was a software company based in Chicago founded by
160:. During their tenure, Liberty Mutual installed an
522:, which purchased the company in September 1991.
34:, is one of the first commercially successful
8:
543:Oral history interview with Joseph Piscopo
321:
434:Advantages of TELON over its competitors
298:Supporting multiple databases including
599:Fourth-generation programming languages
535:
520:Computer Associates International, Inc.
284:Generating COBOL for executing in the
7:
77:and the target environments include
38:for building business applications.
589:Integrated development environments
428:State Street Bank and Trust Company
52:computer-aided software engineering
323:TELON sales figures for the 1980s(
174:by users. The COBOL ran in IBM's
14:
257:was chosen as a contraction of
92:technologies, including IBM's
86:transaction processing systems
1:
181:Digital Equipment Corporation
443:to scrap their application.
88:. TELON supported multiple
223:John Hancock Life Insurance
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513:Computer Associates ("CA")
549:, University of Minnesota
547:Charles Babbage Institute
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179:the new system which the
573:5.0 release announcement
203:Christensen Systems, Inc
165:multiple forms for each
114:TELON is an application
22:Courtesy Don Christensen
469:4th generation language
36:application generators
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312:TELON Design Facility
239:Quincy, Massachusetts
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488:Release 2.0 problems
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208:Technical direction
67:Time Sharing Option
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71:personal computers
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465:Joseph A. Piscopo
455:Pansophic Systems
420:Pansophic Systems
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318:Financial picture
275:Pansophic Systems
154:software engineer
65:using TSO (IBM's
63:operating systems
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561:for transcripts.
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325:Source: Bob Giel
73:("PCs") running
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291:Generating
583:Categories
118:that uses
106:Cullinet's
75:MS-Windows
439:quickly.
244:The name
137:debuggers
501:Telon/38
219:Raytheon
189:Cape Cod
167:IBM 3270
162:IBM 3790
128:COBOL/II
90:database
42:Overview
32:CA-TELON
530:Sources
363:$ 1.8m
355:$ 850k
347:$ 110k
170:TELON.
143:History
104:, plus
411:$ 34m
403:$ 28m
395:$ 18m
387:$ 12m
300:IMS/DB
267:octave
120:macros
98:IMS/DB
69:) and
507:Synon
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379:$ 6m
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338:Sales
259:Telos
255:TELON
251:Telos
246:TELON
130:, or
124:COBOL
28:TELON
571:CA,
564:CA,
333:Year
302:and
293:PL/I
286:CICS
261:and
221:and
132:PL/I
109:IDMS
94:VSAM
83:CICS
81:and
494:DB2
304:DB2
263:Eon
196:IMS
176:TSO
102:DB2
79:IMS
60:MVS
58:'s
56:IBM
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