Computer History Museum

Dodge, Frank oral history

Frank Dodge describes founding McCormack & Dodge in 1969 with his partner Jim McCormack and how their decision to attempt to sell their Fixed Assets software product through direct mail advertising enabled them to become profitable after an initial struggle to find a market niche during a recession. He talks about their gradual internally-financed growth and how their decision to provide training classes to their customers at their Boston location allowed them to avoid the expense of on-site installation support. He describes the role that their customers played in encouraging them to offer annual maintenance services for a fee. He states that IBM's unbundling of software costs from hardware costs had virtually no impact on their business and that the biggest challenge they had to overcome in the early years was the resistance of data processing managers to software that wasn't developed in-house.

Item Details

Date
1986-05-16 (Made)
Type
Document
Catalogue number
102702123
Organization
Computer History Museum
People
Frank Dodge (Interviewee)
Luanne Johnson (Interviewer)
Category
Transcript
Credit line
Gift of Johnson, Luanne
Extent
24 p.
Place of publication
USA/MA/Boston
Language
English
Acquisition number
X5503.2010
Subject
IBM Unbundling, McCormack and Dodge
Archive collection
CHM Oral History Collection
Archive hierarchy
CHM Oral History Collection