Atlas Products International - Company Profile

A well-established, successful business

Atlas Products International was launched in 1992 swiftly establishing a global reputation as innovative and forward-thinking developers of Electronic Data Interchange (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.

In March 2001 Atlas took over support for all Atlas products for GXS.

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

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

In April 2004 BDX was launched as an EDI service – and is now carrying over two million transactions world-wide per week.

In September 2004 Atlas acquired Masterlink, one its main rivals, and successfully integrated the two businesses to consolidate Atlas's leadership position in the SME marketplace and providing a platform for further global growth and expansion.

In July 2005 Atlas acquired the rights to MX EDI software. Further development by Atlas improved ease of use and simplicity of this product, positioning EDI for broad market usage. MX is has become Atlas's fastest selling EDI solution.

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

In November 2007 Atlas, on behalf of GXS, took control of the 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.

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

In January 2008 Atlas opens its Irish Office in Dublin with former GS1 and Pembroke staff.

In July 2008 Atlas launches Atlas Fusion Web system for online EDI, price matching and delivery quantity matching ‘in the cloud’. A world first, the system was adopted by Dunnes Stores providing massive annual operational savings and efficiencies.

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

In March 2009 we re-signed International fashion house Versace for a new three year deal to use Secure Data Exchange to protect the high profile designs and plans sent via the Internet to its global outlets.

In April 2009 Atlas signed first million dollar 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 authored 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 age 16 he created EDI translation tables in the early 90s while at college. After college he 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 Atlas buyback in 2002 and Allan J has focused on enhancing the technical capability of the entire product range.

Bill Pugsley - Non-Executive Chairman

Bill has 37 plus years of commercial data processing experience. He founded Perwill Group in 1973 building it into one of the world's leading independent 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 provided a global consultancy service on the introduction of EDI presenting papers on EDI and allied subjects worldwide.

Howard Grant – Non- Executive Director

Howard is Managing Director of United Merchants plc trading as Unimer. Unimer is an $1.2 billion company providing a payment service for the building supplies industry for many years. Howard is a qualified accountant and brings substantial 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, through the regional buying societies to the largest national groups.