Declan Ganter co-founded and led two very different Dublin-based companies. The Matrix Group was one of Ireland’s largest computer sales organisations in the years when the PC trade mushroomed and Unix systems rose to prominence. Sepro Telecom developed the e-Rate billing software for network operators, attracted international customers and won innovation awards.
Descended from a family of clockmakers, Declan began his own career in technical roles, but soon progressed into sales and management positions.
This testimony begins in the ‘Minicomputer systems and software 1969-82’ archive. Click here to view.
Like many other people in the computer trade, I got my first glimpse of microcomputers at the Computex 1978 exhibition. I remember there was a big crowd around the Budget Computing stand where the Apple II was on display. My first experience of using a micro was during 1979 or 1980 and the machine was probably a borrowed Commodore. I was still working at IBM at that time. The company routinely dismissed systems like the Apple II as ‘closet databases’. The official IBM view was that they would never catch on.
The new products reminded me, however, of the terminals that I had supplied to customers who used the Call/360 service. It was interesting to see how much a single-user computer was now able to do.
In 1981 I joined a company that subsequently sold thousands of personal computers.
Joe Rooney – who I had worked with at IBM – had established Matrix Group in 1979 as the umbrella organisation for a collection of businesses that would make money out of IT in different ways. Computer Staff Recruitment (CSR) was the first of these.
Other operations followed, all sharing offices in South Great Georges Street. Michael Cazabon ran Keytrainer, which taught keyboard skills. John Walsh headed Marketing Thrust – a systems consultancy and training provider. Joe Rooney also started to sell second-hand IBM hardware, delivering products to many of IBM’s larger customers. David Fitzgibbon, who had previously competed against IBM with Telex Computers Ireland, was involved in this activity, although he was never employed directly by the Matrix Group. Joe recruited Aidan Farrell and Martin Fulham, also ex IBM, to expand the sale of these second-user IBM computers. To support these sales the group became a reseller for a UK-based computer leasing company, called Atlantic Computers. Atlantic had a product called Flexlease, devised by founder and motor-racing enthusiast john Foulston, who died in a racing car crash in September 1987.
Systems Software – the applications developer for IBM minicomputers – became affiliated with Matrix and moved into Georges Street, but was always independently owned by Michael Kirwan, who had also worked in IBM.
I took charge of CSR, which Ian Young had previously run. Soon after my arrival, though, I became involved with the newest addition to the Matrix family. We set up Business Automation (BA) to be its computer sales organisation and brought in Barry Rhodes and Peter Comerford to play strategic roles in the company.
Barry selected the Superbrain from Intertec Data Systems as the first machine that BA sold. This was one of many hardware products that ran the CP/M operating system and everyone in the industry knew the limitations of CP/M. We sourced some very simple accounting software that worked with it. Systems Software also commenced developing application software for the pharmacy industry on Superbrain.
Most buyers of the Superbrain were people who wanted to obtain experience on the new generation of low-cost computers. There were not many alternatives available with accounting software.
The computer manager of one of our first Superbrain customers chose the system so that the company could develop new applications of its own. To get this project going, one of its developers started writing code on a machine in the BA office. One Friday evening we locked him inside the premises by mistake. He told us afterwards that he got a lot of work done over the weekend and that our coffee and biscuits had enabled him to survive the incarceration.
The second system that we sold was Digital Equipment’s DECmate – a single-user system for word processing. We added DEC’s new personal computer, the Rainbow, as soon as it became available in 1983. Both products appealed to customers that already had an affinity with Digital.
When IBM’s personal computer appeared in the US in 1981, it didn’t really have an operating system. By the time that the PC reached Europe in early 1983, IBM had got its hands on the DOS software that a company in Seattle had developed. Business Automation applied to become a reseller before the product launch, but IBM did not initially accept us.
We believe it was because we were competing with IBM by selling second-hand IBM computers. This activity was winding down at that time. David Fitzgibbon had ceased involvement and Aidan Farrell and Martin Fulham left Matrix in 1984 to start Reflex Computer Leasing. Sponsored by DCC, this subsequently became a public listed company in Ireland.
Joe also stepped away from active involvement in the daily operations of the Matrix Group, but remained a director. I became group managing director and BA became an IBM dealer in the autumn of 1983.
It was not long before Systems Software produced accounting applications for MS-DOS, reworking some of the software it had developed for the retail trade and pharmacies.
Most of our early sales of the IBM PC were single systems running financial applications. The total cost of a computer, dot matrix printer, accounting software and a spreadsheet in the mid-1980s was typically about £9,000. These catered for most users’ needs. In subsequent years third party companies launched numerous vertical market applications and more effective networking solutions emerged from companies like Novell, 3Com and Bridge Communications. The combination gave rise to significant growth in PC-based enterprise systems.
ACT Venture Capital provided funding for the Matrix Group and took equity in the company. It was a new thing for a financial services firm to invest in an IT sales organisation. ACT showed Matrix how to put in proper management structures and appointed Billy Gorman, founder of Gorman & Associates, an accountancy practice based in Baggot Street, as chairman of the board.
The restructuring experience felt a bit like the IMF coming into Ireland, but it enabled us to expand. In 1986 Matrix Group moved to larger premises in Camden Street.
In July 1988 IBM invited a group of Irish computer resellers to visit the corporate facility in Boca Raton, Florida that had developed the PS/2 generation of personal systems.
Pictured here from left to right are Ciaran Kavanagh (Business Automation), Paul O’Leary (Business Automation), Declan Ganter (Business Automation), Derek Scanlon (Business Automation), Reggie Halpenny (IBM Ireland), Pat Corcoran (IBM Ireland), Neville Kutner (Tomorrows World), Peter Comerford (Business Automation), Afric O’Reilly (COPS), Sean Nevin (Cara), unidentified, Pat Barrett (Smurfit Computing), Johnny Reynolds (Irish Business Systems), David Laird (Datapac),unidentified, Jimmy Cahill (Notley Cahill), Dan Kickham (Datapac), David Williams (IBM Ireland), Mike Heeney (IBM Ireland), Kevin Baker (Cara), Tiernan Quinn (Business Automation), David Little (Cara) and Gerry McDonald (Cara).
Photograph courtesy of Declan Ganter
Business Automation became an early advocate of Unix, after we heard customers like AIB and Telecom Eireann talking about it. They wanted multi-user systems and the networking capabilities of MS-DOS were still very limited. Barry Rhodes, who was always good at product research, made contact with Altos Computer Systems in 1984. BA became its Irish distributor, not only selling Altos systems directly, but also via dealers with expertise in specific vertical markets.
Altos had started in 1977, when a California-based Englishman, Dave Jackson, designed a single-board microcomputer. By 1984 all the Altos computers were multi-user systems and all ran Unix. There were good applications available for them, including accounts software from Tetra in Britain.
BA sold PCs from several manufacturers during the 1980s. We took on new vendors because they supported certain vertical markets, because they had specific networking capabilities, or simply because they gave resellers better margins than the other companies. For example, we sourced Olivetti PCs through Memory Ireland. I even travelled to the Gambia courtesy of Olivetti, although we stayed in a resort that could have been anywhere. We added Compaq to our catalogue in 1986, after hearing that Cara was selling its systems successfully. Wyse PCs came later, because we were familiar with the Wyse terminals that Altos installations used.
We also bought in a communications specialist, Alan Richardson, who worked on local network projects with technologies from 3Com and Bridge Communications. Inside the IBM channel, and across the wider business community, BA gained recognition as a dealer with a broad range of skills and a particular expertise in networking.
Warranty was a huge issue throughout the PC business. With new models appearing all the time, it was always difficult for dealers to maintain a warehouse full of spare parts. We could order replacement parts from IBM or Compaq, but they took a couple of weeks to ship them out. Everyone therefore cannibalised new machines in order to keep their existing customers happy. We constantly swapped components in and out of old and new computers alike.
We were on the alert, therefore, when the global computer industry experienced a shortage of DRAM chips in 1988. Peter Comerford did some research and sourced a large batch of DRAMs from the Frankfurt branch office of a US computer company. We made a good profit by selling those components to the subsidiary of the same company in Ireland !
By the late 1980s Cara and Datapac were our major competitors. Other dealers were generally smaller and tended to focus on vertical markets. Customer loyalty and their perceptions of our people were all important. BA had outstanding sales staff, including Peter Comerford and Paul O’Leary, while Jackie O’Kelly built up our technical expertise. She later became a director of the company.
The Matrix Group kept evolving. We divested Keytrainer, added two new businesses – Matrix Maintenance and EDIMatrix – and sold CSR to Sales Placement in 1990. BA, however, always dominated the group revenues, accounting for as much as 85 per cent of the total.
As the PC became a commodity, selling systems became less profitable and BA had to go through three rightsizing exercises. The first of these took place in 1988 and the second about eighteen months later. On the third occasion, I knew that I would need to involve a larger partner to keep the business going. I phoned John Daly, the managing director at ICL Ireland. ICL acquired BA’s assets in 1992, following the appointment of a liquidator to the company. I stayed on under a contract with ICL, but only for three or four months.
In 1994 I started Cogent Systems Consulting – later known as Sepro Telecom International – which developed billing software for mobile network operators, as they moved from analogue to digital technology. I remained in the software side of the industry for the rest of my career.
Last edit: August 2018
© Declan Ganter 2018