What else was going on then?
- Ronald Regan was the U.S. President.
- Motorola introduced the first mobile phones
- Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.
- ARPANET began using Internet Protocol, thus inventing the Internet
- Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Word were released
- IBM released the PC XT
- Starwars Episode VI and Flashdance were hits at the box office
- Michael Jackson and David Bowie were filling arenas
Many of the products, movies and political figures of the time
were household names. Arguably, Mlink should be as famous. It
came out at the same time and is still in use by a surprising
number of small and very large corporations for all of their
enterprise data transport requirements. And when it comes down
down to sheer "Gotta have it to survive", I think our slogan
says it all, "Because Information Is Business Critical"
Mlink has easily been as important to the business community
as MS Word, if not more so.
One of the absolutely brilliant features of Mlink that has
enhanced it's longevity is it's own proprietary script
programming language. This facilitated the creation of server
based automated polling systems. The first was called the
Polling Manager. PM seems somewhat crude by today's standards,
but it was cutting edge when it was released. In fact, just
a few weeks ago I worked with a very recognizable restaurant
chain who is still using it! The second server polling system
was ACM. The Advanced Communications Manager. ACM was heads
above PM and is currently used by retail and restaurant chains
as well as franchisors that I guarantee you'd all recognize by
name.
Mlink can't last forever, but I think I'll be gone before it's
gone. The writing is on the wall nonetheless. Mlink is no
longer being ported to new OS versions which means it will
eventually stop running on currently supported platforms. But
until then, Happy Birthday Mlink!
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