Case Study — Early 1990s

I/O Mail

A complete electronic mail system designed and built from scratch — not assembled from libraries, not adapted from existing code. Engineered from the ground up by Greg Berthume.

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What I/O Mail Was

In the early 1990s, Greg Berthume designed and built I/O Mail — a full-featured electronic mail and messaging system for the AlphaMicro platform. This wasn't a customization of an existing mail client or a wrapper around someone else's library. Greg engineered the protocols, the interface, the messaging architecture, and the integrated in/out board system from scratch, then took it to market.

I/O Mail competed directly against Alpha Mail and Ultra Mail — the established products on the platform — and won on every dimension that mattered: speed, feature depth, usability, and reliability. The product sheet below shows the scope of what was built.

I/O Mail product description sheet — The complete AlphaMicro E-Mail Solution
Original I/O Mail product description sheet — "The complete AlphaMicro E-Mail Solution"

What Users Said

The following are unsolicited letters from I/O Mail customers — written on company letterhead, signed, and sent to Greg at Basic Systems, Inc. These are not edited testimonials or marketing quotes. They are verbatim business correspondence from real organizations that put I/O Mail into production use.

Myron E. Siegel, P.C.
Siegel and Wille — Attorneys and Counselors at Law, Northbrook, IL
December 26, 1990
"After testing IO Mail now for three full months, I can safely say it is the best electronic mail system that I am aware of. Anyone running electronic mail on the Alpha Micro who is not running IO Mail has made a mistake."
Letter from Myron E. Siegel, Siegel and Wille Attorneys at Law, December 26 1990
Original letter on firm letterhead — Siegel and Wille, Northbrook, Illinois
Roger Williamson, Director of Information Services
St. Andrews Golf Corporation / Las Vegas Discount Golf & Tennis — 60+ store franchise chain
July 2, 1991
"I have never seen a more user-friendly piece of software… I can see that I/O MAIL will become the standard for Electronic Mail in the Alpha Micro world."
Letter from Roger Williamson, Director of Information Services, St. Andrews Golf Corporation, July 2 1991
Original letter on company letterhead — St. Andrews Golf Corporation, Las Vegas Discount Golf & Tennis
Jo Nell Bigando, Office Manager
Thompson Dalton & DeRose — Law Firm, Globe, Arizona
May 5, 1992
"I have never written a fan letter to a computer programmer before, but your I/O MAIL program is so remarkable that I am taking the time to do just that."
Letter from Jo Nell Bigando, Office Manager, Thompson Dalton and DeRose, May 5 1992
Original letter on firm letterhead — Thompson Dalton & DeRose, Globe, Arizona

The Same Approach. A New Problem.

Data Fortress is built with the same philosophy that produced I/O Mail: design it right, build it from scratch, and make it something users actually want to write home about.

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