VCI Systems is 25 – as old as Google!

First established by Robert Creech on 1st December 1997, VCI is excited to be celebrating 25 years in business!

We are even more delighted to still be supporting our very first customer – AEL Solutions – who have recently given us this lovely five-star review!

Since 1997, our customer base has widened, our skill-set has extended and our VCI family has grown – including taking on our newest recruit who is even younger than the company!

But, wow, we’re just reminiscing about how technology has changed over the past 25 years..

Here we take a look back at technological advancements which also have the year 1997 to thank for their existence..!

Mobile phone technology was conceived at the same time

With the introduction of their new mobile phone models, NHE-6BM 8110i (slide open) and NHE-6BX The Nokia 8110i, Nokia were the first to introduce Smart Messaging in 1997. This was a concept which enabled the user to request and receive information and services from an information server via GSM’s text messages (SMS)…the start of everyday text messaging!

In June 1997, Borland and Starfish Software founder Philippe Kahn wanted to share photos of his newborn daughter with international friends and family directly from hospital. There was no such thing as a camera phone back then so, using his Casio digital camera, Motorola phone and laptop, Philippe managed to rig up a wireless-photography device of his own.

Following this success, Philippe and his wife, Sonia Lee, founded LightSurf, a company that helped companies such as Sharp build the earliest mobile phones with built-in cameras and wireless infrastructure for sending instant images…and so photo messaging was born!

Even the history-making iPhone has its roots in 1997. This was the year when Apple’s acquisition of NeXT, the company Steve Jobs had founded after being ousted from Apple in 1985, enabled Steve Jobs (who became interim CEO in 1997 and dropped the “interim” in 2000) to turn Apple around, making the company cool, relevant and financially solvent again.

Steve Jobs provided Apple with NeXT’s operating system software, which initially became the basis of the Mac’s OS X, and then, in 2007, the software for the world-renowned iPhone – which has gone from strength to strength and its impact is yet to be matched by any piece of consumer electronics released since!

The biggest gaming franchise in the world is born in the same year

It was back in October 1997 when the inaugural version of Grand Theft Auto (GTA) was originally released for Windows based PCs and MS DOS, whereby players take on the role of a criminal, completing jobs involving theft and robbery, and amassing points to complete the various levels.

Roll on 25 years, 15 releases of the series and a range of graphical advancements, GTA V, released in 2013, was a smash hit, selling $800M in the first day alone. It is now the second most popular video game of all-time, with 170 million units sold worldwide since release.

To date, the Grand Theft Auto franchise has shipped a total of 380 million units and is the highest rated in the entire games industry.

The World’s most popular search engine is also 25!

It’s hard to imagine life without Google…but, before Google Inc. went live on 4th September 1998, the idea was conceived the previous year with the domain for Google was actually registered on 15th September 1997.

Using automated programs called crawlers, Google downloads text, images and videos from pages it finds on the internet, and stores the information in the Google Index, which is a large database. Using a proprietary algorithm, Google retrieves and orders search results to provide the most relevant and dependable sources of data possible.

Since its conception, Google has added a great deal of new features to its functionality, but, at its core, it remains the same – and is still the world’s most popular search engine.

We’re now wondering what the next 25 years of technological advancements will look like..!

But, one thing we do know is, whatever happens over the next 25 years, we’ll do our best to support you every step of the way!