TORONTO, ON – Avanti Computer Systems Limited celebrated their 25th anniversary in style, inviting customers, friends and family to visit them in their new offices. The theme of the party was Cajun as they also begin to ramp up for their next User Conference which will take place in New Orleans in March 2010.
 
Avanti got its start back in 1984, right around the time of the introduction of the IBM PC and Microsoft's DOS operating system; two technologies that revolutionized the computing industry.  The origins of Avanti were all the result of a conversation between Avanti's founder, Dr. Richard Wallin, and one of his close friends who happened to work at a printing company. The friend was complaining about how difficult a process it was to put together accurate, consistent estimates for print jobs. Surely, this was something these new "personal computers" could help with!
 
Requirements were scoped out on the back of a napkin and the original code was programmed at Dr. Wallin's dining room table on a PC that IBM had lent to Dr. Wallin as part of IBM's program to get applications up and running on their new platform. The original version of Avanti's software literally ran on a PC with two 5 ¼ floppy drives - the entire application running off of one floppy disk and all the data stored on the other floppy (with a capacity of 360K!).
 
Fast forward 25 years and a lot has changed at Avanti. While Avanti remains completely focused on software for the printing industry, Avanti's product now goes well beyond the original litho estimating system. Avanti software now has over 1.5 million lines of code, and includes over 35 modules and over 20 JDF integrations into 3rd party applications and equipment.
 
"It's the perfect time for a party" says Patrick Bolan, Avanti's President and CEO. "Renovations are now complete on our new offices; our 25th year in business was another very successful one for us and, with the Avanti User Conference coming up in New Orleans, it was very easy to pick the theme for the party".
 
Dr. Wallin is now enjoying retirement, after a successful transition of the business to three new owners who came on the scene 5 years ago; Patrick Bolan, Stephen McWilliam and Peter Funnell. All three are actively involved in the day-to-day running of the business and have seen the company more than double in size in that time. The four of them took some time this summer to celebrate the 25th anniversary on Dr. Wallin's sailboat, spending a great day sailing on Lake Ontario.