Just a note to the older folks on the list

One of the pioneers of packaged software in the midrange community passed 
away yesterday at the age of 80. Bob Nelson founded Elke Corporation in 
1977 after spending thirty-one years in the construction industry. During 
that time, he rose from the job of grease monkey through the equipment 
department to the position of general manager of one of the largest 
construction companies in the United States. He counted among his friends 
and associates the other giants of the industry, names like Bechtel, 
Kiewit, Morrison, Knudsen, and the like. Even though he worked in that 
rarified atmosphere, he never forgot that he started with grease under his 
fingernails. During his tenure at S.J. Groves & Sons, he saw the value of 
computerizing the records collected by the company's equipment department. 
These records kept track of everything related to a machine, from 
acquisition to disposal, with every oil change and overhaul in between 
being tracked. Groves Company grew from a $50 million enterprise to $250 
million in the ten years after it acquired its first IBM System/360 and 
hired a team of programmers to build a maintenance management system. Mr. 
Nelson, in addition to his regular duties, chaired the design committee 
overseeing the programming efforts.

Following his retirement in 1974, Mr. Nelson saw what IBM was doing in the 
midrange computer marketplace, and became convinced that his design could 
be made to work for the small to medium business environment, and sold to 
customers using the IBM System/32 and its successors. With a friend from a 
construction supply business, he co-founded the Elke Corporation. Elke's 
sole mission was to produce what is still considered by many the best 
maintenance management software system ever written. This software is 
still in use at over a thousand locations around the world. 

IBM took note of Elke's success by including the firm in its early 
business partner programs, and because of it's proximity to Rochester, 
Elke participated in the "Silverlake" project beginning in 1987. As we all 
know, that project yielded the AS/400 system.

In 1993, SSA decided to add a maintenance management module to its product 
line, and acquired the Elke Corporation. As a testament to the product and 
the team that Mr. Nelson assembled, many of Elke's former employees still 
work for SSA supporting and enhancing the product, and the support line 
staff dedicated to the product consistently score some of the highest 
marks given to SSA's product support teams.

During his second retirement, Mr. Nelson focused his attention on his 
family as a loving husband of Harriet, his wife of fifty-six years, a 
caring father of four sons, and a devoted grandfather of nine.


Paul Nelson
Arbor Solutions, Inc.
708-670-6978  Cell
pnelson@xxxxxxxxxx