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Caduceus Consulting - Name and Company History A meeting of Recent and Ancient history
Caduceus Consulting was started in 1984 as Caduceus Medical Software. It was a sole proprietorship, owned and operated by Andrew Welch. The company was reformed and registered as intellact in 2003. The name "Caduceus", pronounced {kuh-doo'-see-uhs}, is the name of the winged staff entwined with two serpents that has become a widely accepted symbol for the art of medicine. In fact, Caduceus was carried by Hermes, who was the Greek god of chance, sleep, and roads, and also the messenger of the Olympian deities. For its first seven years, Caduceus Medical Software was only intermittently active, doing research and software development for the medical profession, especially in the area of clinical laboratory work and diagnosis. The Greek god of healing was named Asclepius {ah-sklee'-pee-uhs}. He too carried a winged wand (thus the possible confusion), but his had just a single snake wrapped around it. In 1991, the company was renamed to Caduceus Software and Consulting, and began more intensive work with integrating the MultiValue database concept (also known as Pick-style or multi-dimesional relational database) with the fast emerging Microsoft Windows environment. For MultiValue developers, formerly limited to character-based applications, integration was essential to giving their legacy code new life. One of the first projects undertaken by Caduceus Software and Consulting was to develop a code library in Visual Basic so that programmers from a MultiValue Basic background would have familiar functions and capabilities in the new Visual Basic environment. According to mythology, Hermes would gently place Caduceus upon the eyes of those who were being summoned to the hereafter, and he carried it as his staff in conducting the dead to the next plane of existence. In 1993, the company started working with Amaron Software and Design, the developer of the WinLink connectivity product, to create several sophisticated utilities using WinLink. When Amaron was purchased by Via Systems, Caduceus continued to work with the new owners of the product to enhance its out-of-the-box functionality. The Caduceus wand originally belonged to Apollo, god of the arts, prophecy, medicine, and light. When he heard the shepherd's pipe that Hermes played, he was so entranced that he bargained Caduceus in exchange for the pipe. As WinLink's popularity grew, so did the demand for competant and relevant training for MultiValue programmers who wanted to have the best of both the old and new worlds. In 1995, Caduceus Software and Consulting began providing that training, and, given its new focus, became simply Caduceus Consulting. It might be noted that Hermes was also the god of wealth, and the protector of merchants and {ahem} thieves. In recent years, Caduceus Consulting moved further from its programming roots. Andrew Welch switched careers in 1998 to focus on experiential training and performance enhancement for corporate clients. Still, he continues to maintain a few long-term MultiValue clients, and occasionally consults on limited IT projects. In 2003, Caduceus Consulting was re-registered as intellact, ending a 20 year phase, and beginning a new one.
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Copyright © 2006 intellact
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