Datastorm Technologies, Inc., was a computer software company that existed from 1986 until 1996. Bruce Barkelew and Thomas Smith founded the company to develop and publish ProComm, a general purpose communications program for

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

s. ProComm flourished in the pre-

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

world, when personal computers used

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

s to connect over

telephone line A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system. It is designed to reproduce speech of a quality that is understandable. It is the physical wire or ot ...

s with other individual computers, online services such as

CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...

bulletin board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...

s (BBSs),

Telnet Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet control i ...

and

Gopher Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They are ...

sites, and the like. Datastorm was the first company to grow from a

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

publisher into a large commercial software publisher. ProComm 2.4.3 for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

is still available as shareware.

History

The death of

Andrew Fluegelman Andrew Cardozo Fluegelman (November 27, 1943 – July 6, 1985) was a publisher, photographer, programmer and attorney best known as a pioneer of what is now known as the shareware business model for software marketing. He was also the founding ...

, creator of

PC-Talk PC-Talk is a communications software program. It was one of the first three widely popular software products sold via the marketing method that became known as shareware. It was written by Andrew Fluegelman in late 1982, and helped created sharew ...

, left a gap in the offerings of dial-up communications and terminal emulation software. Bruce Barkelew and Tom Smith,

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

students at the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Universit ...

, formed PIL Software Systems in 1985 to develop ProComm. They distributed the program as

through

s. Based on the program's popularity, Barkelew and Smith founded Datastorm Technologies Inc. in 1986 to build a full-fledged company around the product. The founders chose

Columbia, Missouri Columbia is a city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It is the county seat of Boone County and home to the University of Missouri. Founded in 1821, it is the principal city of the five-county Columbia metropolitan area. It is Missouri's fourth ...

, as the company's headquarters because of the relatively low cost of living and to tap into the pool of programmers graduating from the University of Missouri's computer science department. Datastorm financed its growth by reinvesting its earnings rather than through outside investors. In 1992, they were ranked 376 in the Inc. 500. The company produced a combination 16/32-bit Procomm Plus for Windows, which included an early web browser called Web Zeppelin. Procomm Plus for Windows supported the

remote imaging protocol The Remote Imaging Protocol and its associated Remote Imaging Protocol Script language, RIP''scrip'', is a graphics language that provides a system for sending vector graphics over low-bandwidth links, notably modems. It was originally created b ...

(RIP) graphic terminal language. This enabled display of higher-resolution images than the

ANSI escape code ANSI escape sequences are a standard for in-band signaling to control cursor location, color, font styling, and other options on video text terminals and terminal emulators. Certain sequences of bytes, most starting with an ASCII escape charac ...

s that most bulletin board systems used at the time. In November 1993, the

data transmission Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point o ...

program reached the number one ranking on

PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present d ...

's list of top retail software. In 1995, Datastorm sued Excalibur Communications over software infringement. Datastorm became the first company to sue a vendor for infringement of its software using the shareware model. Datastorm grew through 40 consecutive profitable quarters, then was acquired by

Quarterdeck The quarterdeck is a raised deck behind the main mast of a sailing ship. Traditionally it was where the captain commanded his vessel and where the ship's colours were kept. This led to its use as the main ceremonial and reception area on bo ...

in 1996 for over

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

70 million. Quarterdeck was later purchased by Symantec. Support for the last release of Procomm, version 4.8, was discontinued in 2002.

Awards

* 1989: BYTE "Distinction" Award * 1992: Dvorak PC Telecommunications Excellence Award * 1997:

Shareware Industry Awards The Shareware Industry Awards were a series of awards issued annually by the Shareware Industry Awards Foundation during the Software Industry Conference. Origin of the Shareware Industry Award The Software Industry Conference website notes: "The S ...

Shareware Hall of Fame

References

{{Authority control Defunct software companies of the United States Communication software Terminal emulators Companies based in Columbia, Missouri Software companies established in 1986 Software companies disestablished in 1996 1986 establishments in Missouri 1996 disestablishments in Missouri