Atlas Products International - Company Profile

A well-established, successful business

Atlas Products International was launched in 1992 and swiftly established an international reputation as innovative and forward-thinking developers of EDI.

The flexibility and robustness of Atlas’s core EDI product made it the software solution of choice and resulted in the rapid growth of the company. In 1997 Atlas was acquired by US software giant Harbinger (now Inovis).

March 2001 Atlas takes over support for all Atlas products for GXS and Inovis.

December 2002 founder director Allan W Gray and son Allan J Gray bought Atlas back from Inovis Atlanta and has since rebuilt the business into a thriving, market leading data communication, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and XML specialist, producing solutions enjoyed by thousands of organisations, small, medium and large, in diverse business sectors.

December 2003 Atlas acquired the rights to Business Data Exchange (BDX) system from Syntrex Italy. This system was in use around the world as a simplified system for moving data securely over the Internet with complete assurance of deliverability and non-repudiation.

April 2004 BDX launched as an EDI service – as of 2008 is carrying over one million transactions per week.

September 2004 Atlas acquired Masterlink, one its main rivals, and successfully merged the two businesses to consolidate Atlas's leadership position in the SME marketplace and provide the basis for further growth and expansion.

July 2005 Atlas buys the rights to MX EDI software. Its further development by Atlas for ease of use and simplicity has brought EDI truly to the masses and has become the fastest selling EDI software for Atlas.

June 2006 Atlas launch Matrix as an outsourced service providing ‘EDI in the cloud’ with its any to any format translator and any to any transfer protocol.

November 2007 Atlas, on behalf of GXS, take control of Northern Ireland Tradanet service from Fujitsu providing a much needed opportunity to Northern Ireland EDI users to upgrade software, services and systems, replacing old GE Desktop, Intercept Plus and Interact software and removing the reliance upon antiquated modems in favour of modern broadband communication.

Jan 2008 Atlas purchase the rights to Pembroke Ireland’s customer base, Buying Group Web Portal, OCR and Document scanning systems

Jan 2008 Atlas opens its Irish Office in Dublin with ex GS1 and Pembroke staff.

July 2008 Atlas launches Atlas Fusion Web system for online EDI, price matching and delivery quantity matching ‘in the cloud’. This is a world’s first and adopted by Dunnes Stores to give them massive annual operational savings and efficiency.

November 2008 Atlas sign three year contract with GXS to provide them with an extra layer of security using SDX within GXS MFT (managed file transfer)

March 2009 Atlas resigns Versace for a new 3 year deal to use Secure Data Exchange to protect the high profile designs and plans sent via the Internet to its global outlets.

April 2009 Atlas signs first half million pound deal for Secure Data Exchange in Canada

Allan W Gray - Managing Director

Atlas's reputation for innovation and dedication to customer service is personified by the businesses founder. Allan is a well known and well respected figure and many of the developments pioneered by Allan are now established as industry best practice. Before moving into mainstream computing on mainframe and mini computers for Royal Ordnance, Allan’s early computing days were spent on writing software converting games from tape to disc for Ataris back in the late 70s and early 80s and was the author of Howfen DOS, a product that still has a following of fans almost 30 years later.

Allan J Gray – Technical Director

Known in the company as AJ, Allan has been involved with EDI for over half his life. From the tender age of 16 he created EDI translation tables in the early 90s while at college. On leaving college Allan joined Atlas and continued to work there as a programmer and then project leader under Harbinger up until 1999 before leaving to set up his own business. That business joined with Allan W in the buyback of Atlas in 2002 and Allan J has worked solidly enhancing the technical capability of the entire product range ever since.

Bill Pugsley - Non-Executive Chairman

Bill has more than 37 years of commercial data processing experience. He founded Perwill Group in 1973 and built it into one of the world's leading independant providers of eCommerce software and services before selling the business in 2005 to Kewill Systems PLC

A Fellow of the Institute of Directors (F.Inst.D.) Bill has advised clients around the world on the introduction of EDI and has presented papers on EDI and allied subjects on five continents

Howard Grant – Non- Executive Director

Howard is the Managing Director for United Merchants PLC trading as Unimer. Unimer is a £800 million pound company providing a payment service for the builders merchant arena for many years. Howard is a qualified accountant and brings his financial expertise to the board.

United Merchants plc (Unimer) is the UK's largest merchants co-operative, providing invoice clearing and marketing services to suppliers in return for over-riding settlement discounts, which are returned to the merchant shareholders.

Unimer's objective is to provide an all-embracing, all-industry trading environment, where everyone in the merchant industry is represented - from the local independents to the regional buying societies to the largest national groups.