About FCI

Learning about Formula Consultants

An FCI employee at the console of our current 2200 system. Over the years we have upgraded the 2200s and peripherals in our data center, to develop our products and support your needs.

Our Mission:

Enhancing the Productivity and Integrity of your OS 2200 Presence

Our mission and purpose are simple.

We help you enhance the productivity, security, and business continuity on your OS 2200 systems, with our products and services. We excel in solving complex technical challenges to serve the needs of our OS 2200 customers.

We are known for our responsiveness and the quality of our solutions.

About Our Staff

300

Added together, the experience of all FCI technical employees exceeds 300 years.

Deep expertise in technical disciplines:

EXEC internals
tape processing
communications
security
database
integration of external systems

Learn more about FCI’s staff.

Our Customers

Our products enhance the value of customers’ OS 2200 investments. Read how FCI’s products contribute to the advancement of the OS 2200 platform.

We solve challenging technical problems on OS 2200 platforms. We help customers connect 3rd party solutions, to extend the reach and function of their 2200 systems.

Some of Our Customers

FCI History

The Early Years

After several years helping Sperry stabilize systems at customers in the West, Joe Dale took a position in Technical Planning and Integration for the County of Los Angeles. There he met future business partners and employees. Joe left in 1978 to form his own company. He gained contracts in COBOL programming and systems support for Sperry customers in Southern California. As his business grew, he invited some of his former colleagues to join him. Soon FCI had acquired the rights to a software tape management system. Joe and his team expanded it to fulfill its commercial potential. STAR-1100 became the preeminent tape management system in the 2200 community—crucial to many customers’ operations.

Concurrently, the growing cadre of FCI technicians was helping other Southern California clients achieve ambitious business goals through technical innovation. FCI became known as a company of bright, energetic experts who solved challenging problems in the Unisys operating system and application areas. The company’s reputation for excellence quickly spread throughout the Unisys community.

We Help Clients Succeed

By now, FCI had established itself as best among a handful of nationally known software providers for Unisys 2200. FCI attracted the attention of two large computer equipment manufacturers who wanted to attach their specialty peripheral devices to Unisys systems. FCI integrated these leading-edge storage products with both the OS 2200 and A Series mainframes. Unisys customers expanded their data options with the innovative parallel processing capability of Teradata’s database system. Other Unisys sites automated their tape operations via the StorageTek robotic products. In both relationships, FCI delivered multiple software products and fulfilled many roles:

— Solving highly technical challenges such as modifying the mainframe operating systems and adapting university code to build the first commercial 2200 TCP/IP stack.

— Building internal teams in documentation, quality assurance, training, and support, to off-load the client.

— Adopting the client’s engineering standards to achieve the highest levels of quality.

— Going on the road with the client’s marketing and sales teams to ensure a vigorous business success for the client.

More FCI Products

Over the years, FCI helped OS 2200 customers improve their security and business continuity by introducing additional products.

OTS-1100 authenticates an authorized user, executing permitted transactions from known terminals. IDS-2200 tracks security-related events on the 2200 system and notifies administrators when users attempt to access unauthorized resources.

We built AccommoDate to help customers ensure that their applications would perform without anomalies through the Y2K transition.

We developed Library Manager to enable the attachment of the DSI virtual tape library to OS 2200 systems.

We conceived and built ESP-Dorado to give customers visibility into their storage resources, with dashboard and interactive interfaces. With the global search feature, users find missing source elements in seconds.

Thru-Lines to Today

Through FCI’s history:

Offering superior tape management and automation, from round-reel to virtual.

Improving your operations by giving you greater visibility into your storage resources

Helping you guard your mainframe security.

Satisfying clients’ governance requirements, technical processes, and quality standards.

So Many More Stories . . .