Description

In 1989 a number of colleagues who were working for an IBM Systems Centre and Novell Systems House broke away and formed a new business.
In the end the team that broke away split in two and in June 1990 Catalysts Electronic Publishing Ltd was formed which later became Catalysts Ltd.

The basis for the formation of Catalysts’ business was the online help delivered by Novell Netware – this was Folio Views. We saw the potential for this software as a basic full text search engine.

Confirmation of the soundness of that decision is that Folio Views is still in use and being sold. Further its derivative for browser access now known as Rocket NXT is also still going strong.

Catalysts exploited the technology to build a business with commercial publishers and corporate information providers. We help Clients design implement host and support systems for publishing mainly professional reference information.

Our major customers have included: Thomson Reuters Lexis Nexis Juta The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting in England and Wales Wolters Kluwer KPMG Ernst & Young Grant Thornton Deloitte and Aviva Investors.

Most recently Catalysts has been developing a process of diversification. This has involved:

Partnering with a Finnish software developer Documill with an exciting new search product Visual Search which used with any ‘browser accessed’ search application saves searchers significant time and cost.
Partnering with the Solcara team in Thomson Reuters to take their Federated Search system to the non-Legal market.
Partnering with Mintogordon to augment our consulting services for organisations seeking to align their information management with their corporate strategy.
Developing its own software - a Commerce Management and Online Payment system called Sindromi – now in a new associated company Sindromi Ltd.
Creating the first of our own websites BioscienceInfo4U.com – now in another new associated company Portals4U Ltd.