Immerse yourself in our journey, explore the milestones that defined our path, and discover how we became leaders in information technology.
Discover the History of HTI Technology
Officially, we were born on December 26, 1990, by the hands of three musketeer-friends (Alexandre, Bastiaan, and Fábio). We all worked together in a renowned company in the food sector, respectively as: CPD manager (remember that: Data Processing Center), CFO, and Finance Manager.
It was a bustling time. The main IT suppliers in Brazil were: IBM, HP-Edisa, Sisco (yes, with an “S”), Prológica, SID, Labo, Elebra, among many other nostalgic names. The electronic spreadsheet was Visicalc, Lotus 123, and Quattro. Word processors? WORDSTAR and the brilliant national creation CARTA CERTA! Databases were Dbase (sorry, but they really were…). Programming languages: Cobol, C, Pascal, Fortran, Basic (wow!), and Clipper (how I miss it!).
The national IT market was closed and protected by law, and by the feared and now-defunct SEI (Special Secretariat of Informatics), which honestly didn’t make much sense to us. It was the dawn of microcomputing. In this turbulent and wonderful scenario, we decided to venture into founding HTI, which back then was called High Tech Informática.
Initially, we took advantage of the restructuring wave (downsizing), replacing the expensive minicomputers with microcomputers (the ultra-powerful PC XT with its super specs: 4.77 MHz (yes, that’s right, megahertz) processing speed, 640KB of memory, and the quiet and spacious “winchester” 20MB hard drive – even my current aspirin has more memory than that).
All of this was connected in a network (yes, network!). There was a company with cutting-edge network technology, the mighty Novell and its powerful Netware 2.11. It was fun installing networks with coaxial cables, 50 OHM, and 2mbits/s. The most hilarious part was the broom problem! It happened when the cleaning staff accidentally cut the cable. That was it, the entire network would go down due to its “clothesline” topology.
With the arrival of the giant paint company in the country, HTI Tecnologia was chosen to develop an application capable of formulating automotive paint. Based on formulas developed by PPG, the application created by HTI was responsible for measuring the pigments, weighing them, adjusting them, and mixing them to then create automotive touch-up paint. Due to the success of the project, HTI Tecnologia was selected to supply over 3,000 computers to distributors and workshops that would make up the PPG coverage network. For 4 years, we supplied the equipment and supported the ‘PaintPlus’ system, which would later be acquired by PPG Brazil.
Roll Out” of routers and switches for Unibanco, an operation that involved project planning, equipment supply and replacement, as well as configuration with minimal downtime. Over 1,500 switches and 50 routers were replaced within a strict and inflexible quality standard.
Therefore, our natural vocation for ‘bit and byte brushing’ would emerge. It was not enough to do downsizing; we had to go back to our roots – programming! Assembler and C in the veins (now, in the old days!).
We began programming relentlessly, giving rise to products that became market best-sellers.
TedLib: A collection of functions for Clipper programmers. If you programmed in Clipper, you surely encountered this magnificent product.
Odontho Plus: The first application for dentists that allowed the use of a graphical interface for treatment notes. Later, we sold the rights to this software to a computer manufacturer.
School Max: Integrated control for schools.
Questor: The first application for pilot training in Brazil. It was so revered in the 90s that it was plagiarized by a large aviation company through its ‘training’ division.
Paint Plus: A custom-developed application for a large vehicle paint and repaint company. It was a great challenge because the company was establishing itself in the country, and we had only nine months to complete the project for controlling the entire paint formulation process.
Admtech: An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for small and medium-sized companies. Originally written in 1996 in Clipper + C with a Dbase database. It had a long and honorable service life until December 2009.
The partnership with HP – Hewlett Packard begins, through which HTI Tecnologia establishes itself as a major supplier of HP servers and storage solutions. Even with a strong focus on servers, we began selling the desktop line. In the same year, we also signed a partnership for the supply of networking equipment from Cisco, thus ending our partnership with Com, with whom we had been partnered for more than 5 years.
The end of 2000 and the beginning of 2001 would change our history. That year, we were looking for a relational database for our applications. During a trip, the first contact with MySQL emerged, the ‘open source,’ the concept of community, and the ‘hacking business model.’ At that time, the current version was MySQL 3.23. A bit of a beginner, robustness wasn’t a requirement, but passion spoke louder, and we adopted MySQL in all of our applications.
After winning a large RFP from a rapidly growing call center company at the time, HTI Tecnologia supplied and installed over 12,000 HP computers, more than 250 servers, and Cisco network equipment. The supply contract extended until 2004. In the same year, we also sold the rights to Questor to an aviation company.
We got closer to the creator of MySQL and the community, and then we started submitting code, bug reports, ideas, and, most importantly, creating small tools (free) for MySQL users, such as: alemonitor (basic monitoring), alebkp (raw binary backup), alejuice (table restore), among others.
We officially brought the AVAST antivirus software to Brazil. Until then, it was an antivirus with little presence in the new continent. A powerful antivirus, with a free version, known by technicians but unknown in the market. We transformed AVAST into one of the most well-known and respected security software in the Brazilian market, creating a large customer base and network of resellers.
Change of Plans!
In 2005, after 15 years focusing on the development of ERP for small and medium-sized businesses, and nearly 10 years in hardware distribution, we decided it was time to stop. Thus, we closed a chapter of our lives and shifted our focus exclusively to two areas: security and databases.
With the emergence of MySQL Americas, a formal company based in Cupertino (USA), just a few blocks from Apple’s headquarters, and given our extensive familiarity with MySQL, we decided to bring the first official MySQL training to South America. Thus, we signed our first contract with MySQL, marking more than 7 years of experience with that database.
In 2008, MySQL, as a brand and company, was acquired by Sun Microsystems, and shortly thereafter (April 2010), it was acquired by Oracle. It was a tumultuous period, with many uncertainties among the MySQL community and its users. By this time, HTI had already earned 2 consecutive awards as the best “AMEC” (Authorized MySQL Education Center), a significant achievement among many other excellent training centers around the world.
HTI became the first company in South America to sponsor the annual MySQL event (MySQL User’s Conference) in Santa Clara, United States, alongside companies like Amazon and Facebook. We developed the MIND (Mastering Indexes) training for creating indexes in MySQL.
Big Data begins to take shape and is seen in Brazil as a possibility. And Hadoop is at the forefront of this new wave of data revolution. We formed a partnership with Cloudera, the leader in Big Data, and conducted the first official Hadoop training in Brazil.
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