David M. Bennett

A Personal Web Site

Powerflex Corporation

During the 1980s I wrote a development language and runtime environment compatible with Dataflex, one of the leading products at the time. I chose it because I knew where to find people to use my software, which I called Powerflex.

After showing it to some people and getting encouraging feedback, I decided to set up a company to develop and market it. Thus began Powerflex Corporation in 1989. We found a lot of interest in our products and the company grew rapidly, with customers from all over the world inside the first year.

We also attracted the ire of the makers of Dataflex. They sued us for breach of copyright in the language, and the case ran 10 years before the High Court of Australia finally found in our favour. The judgment is here, but the case has spawned a literature of its own.

PFXplus provides a package of language, user interface and database to greatly simplify the development of commercial applications. It also provides an upgrade path for Dataflex 2.3 and 3.x users who were no longer supported. And it is much faster.

Over time we have added Unix ports, OS/2, Windows console and Windows graphical mode, first 16 bit and then 32 bit. We added support for Btrieve and then DB2, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

We were able to retain a large measure of upward compatibility throughout, so our customers continued to upgrade to later versions. We sold over 1,000 development systems and upwards of 100,000 runtime licences. Most people in Australia have had at least one transaction handled by our software tools.

Some of our customers have been with us for over 15 years. The company remains profitable, continuing to sell and support its products to customers around the world.

Powerflex Corporation Web Site

 

This is my software product business, quite a rare thing in this country.

If you are in the same line of business and would like to discuss mutual interests, please contact me.