Digital Communication Associates, Inc. (DCA), was a company in the computer and

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than tha ...

industry, located in

Alpharetta, Georgia Alpharetta is a city in northern Fulton County, Georgia, United States, and is a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. As of the 2020 US Census, Alpharetta's population was 65,818 The population in 2010 was 57,551. History In the 1830s, the Ch ...

, United States.

Overview

Digital Communications Associates was founded by John Alderman, who led the company until 1981, when he was replaced by Bertil Nordin. In February 1983, DCA went public, raising 24 million

USD 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 ...

. Later, Garry Betty (1957-2007) was CEO of DCA, until he left for

Earthlink EarthLink is an American Internet service provider. It went public on NASDAQ in January 1997. Much of the company's growth was via acquisition; by 2000, ''The New York Times'' described Earthlink as the "second largest Internet service provider ...

in November 1996. Together with

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

, DCA had designed the DCA/Intel Communicating Applications Specification (CAS). It defines a standard, high-level programming interface for data communications applications. The DCX format is the standard file format for storing

FAX Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...

images in CAS. DCA was in the market of producing T-1 multiplexers. In 1995, DCA of Alpharetta, Georgia, was acquired by

Attachmate Attachmate Corporation is a 1982-founded software company which focused on secure terminal emulation, legacy integration, and managed file transfer software. Citrix-compatibility and Attachment ''Reflection'' were enhanced/added offerings. Hist ...

of Bellevue, Washington.

Acquisitions

In 1981, under the leadership of Bertil Nordin, DCA acquired Technical Analysis Corporation (TAC), the makers of the

IRMA Board Irma may refer to: People * Irma (name), a female given name * Irma (singer), full name Irma Pany, a Cameroonian female singer-songwriter Places * Irma, Alberta, Canada, a village * Irma, Lombardy, Italy, a ''comune'' * Irma, Wisconsin, USA, a ...

which enabled PCs to function as

3270 The IBM 3270 is a family of block oriented display and printer computer terminals introduced by IBM in 1971 and normally used to communicate with IBM mainframes. The 3270 was the successor to the IBM 2260 display terminal. Due to the text ...

terminals to an IBM

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

host. In September 1986, DCA bought

Cohesive Networks Cohesion may refer to: * Cohesion (chemistry), the intermolecular attraction between like-molecules * Cohesion (computer science), a measure of how well the lines of source code within a module work together * Cohesion (geology), the part of shear ...

. In 1986, DCA acquired Microstuf, makers of the Crosstalk Communications package together with their flagship product, the

terminal emulation A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote ter ...

program

Crosstalk Mk.4 Crosstalk Mk.4 was a commercially available PC telecommunications and terminal emulation software package originally produced by Atlanta-based Crosstalk Communications, from the late 1980s through 1990, and by Digital Communications Associates ( ...

. In 1991, DCA acquired Cincinnati-based InterComputer Communications Corporation (ICC), makers of the INFOConnect line of terminal emulation and file-transfer products (focused on the Unisys ecosystem), OpenMind (collaboration) and RLN (remote lan node) In 1992, DCA acquired Westborough-based Avatar Technologies, makers of the Mac Mainframe hardware and software

3270 emulator A 3270 Emulator is a terminal emulator that duplicates the functions of an IBM 3270 mainframe computer terminal on a computer, usually a PC or similar microcomputer. As the original 3270 series terminals were connected to the host computer th ...

s, for $8 million.

References

{{US-telecom-company-stub Companies based in Fulton County, Georgia Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Networking hardware companies Telecommunications equipment vendors