SUMit's history

1996, the pre SUMit era

• Henk Jan Nootenboom changes into a completely different environment after working 11½ years at Royal Dutch Airlines, IT department. He heads for Kuala Lumpur to work as as a contractor for Software Alliance Malaysia (SAM), bringing his experience along with
  1. logistic planning systems,
  2. expert systems,
  3. and object oriented Smalltalk
  SAM is a joint venture of IBM, Malaysia Airlines and Swiss Air, located at plaza IBM.
• At SAM he studies several algoritms for shift roster planning.
• The internet is emerging as a new platform. Everybody talks about a new, object oriented programming language: Java.
• Half a year later an economic crisis hits Asia. Henk Jan terminates his contract work in Malaysia earlier than expected.
• Henk Jan invests his Malaysian ringit and purchases an IBM thinkpad. Henk Jan recognises many OO concepts of his beloved beloved Smalltalk. In the cool highlands of Sumattra he develops a shift roster generator.

1997, the early SUMit years

• Henk Jan ships his belongings back to the Netherlands. The shipment is lost for months. With just one office shirt and a tie Henk Jan starts looking for new customers in the Netherlands. Java is unknown in the Netherlands at that time.
• Laurella Asselman, a former KLM colleague of Henk Jan, comes up with the name SUMit, being an abbriviation of
  • SUMatra
  • Information
  • Technology.
  The island of Sumatra (the one next to Java) appears in the SUMit logo.
• The first SUMit customer offers Smalltalk contract work for the employee information system Perman II.
• SUMit founds SUMit on the 5^th May at the chambre of commerce in Rotterdam, during a lunch break. SUMit headquarters settles in Gouda, the city famous for cheese. Soon after the foundation, the first customer receives the first invoice.

1998, OO Smalltalk

• A bit of Smalltalk contract work increases the SUMit cash.
• Henk Jan studies HTML. To his surprise this turns out to be a déjà vu.
• SUMit has a website. www.sum-it.nl is on line, end of December 1998.
• End 1998 Henk Jan recharges his battery in tropical Malaysia. The worst of the economic crisis seems over in Asia.

1999, www.sum-it.nl materialises

• At the Malaysian highlands around Bukit Fraser www.sum-it.nl materilises.
• The software from the Sumatra era gets an online location:
  • Demo shift roster generator
  • Demo minimalisation of costs, maximalisation of quality
  
• The Smalltalk contract generates the largest share of revenue.
• The first SUMit training is a success: Make a home page with HTML
• Soon a second training follows: E-Commerce met data driven websites, using PHP and MySQL

2000, Dot com hype

• In Ireland Henk Jan writes the third SUMit training, a popular one on internet: Efficient database desig.
• The dot com hype is at its peak. Internet is booming business. The first Java project for SUMit, contract work via Devote: a webapplication for OHRA customes to buy stocks online.
• The second Java contract, for a large telcom is sheer madness. Henk Jan sees how his programmers crawl under their desks at night to catch a few hours of sleep.
• The revenu reaches a new high, but the dotcom speed is exhausting. When the year ends, Henk Jan escapes from the dotcom hype. He is as happy as a swaggie in a billabong when the Australian Embassy sticks a skippy in his passport.

2001, SUMit shift roster generator

• The last Smalltalk contract: Link Perman II to a new webbased system using XML.
• A company at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport orders the first SUMit shift roster software. It is a milestone for SUMit, in hosue software development of a shift roster generator, using the artificial intelligence developed in Sumatra.
• SUMit opens a temporary side office, a software development center in Yarley, between New York and Philadelphia.

2002, Focus on research

• SUMit's second tailored software project is a project planning tool, that computes the feasibility of deadlines.
  Again, SUMit develops software in Yardley.
• SUMit invests lots of time in research, develops a very fast route planning algorithm for the travelling salesman problem.
• In a second research project SUMit analyses the logic of the Google ranking algorithm. The SUMit website gets a higher ranking in Google.

2003, training shift roster design

• At KPN telecom SUMit trains a team of programmers. They apply the learned theory with great enthousiasm
  • Object Orientation,
  • Design using paper prototypes
  • Discount usability sessions.
• Henk Jan invents the T-model.
• SUMit research and development creates huizentoppers.nl.
• SUMit develops a shift roster design training.

2004, Standard Shift Roster Software

• The shift roster design training is a great success for many customers.
• SUMit develops the online shift roster program.
• SUMit gets too busy to do any contract work for third parties. In 2004 SUMit already serves 51 customers. SUMit does a last contract job near Utrecht: match supply and demand for traders of computer hardware.
• SUMit develops advanced route planning softare, for the VCC group in Utrecht, using the algorithms from previous research.
• SUMit expands internationally, finds a business partner in the Flemmish Sara Borremans. Sara takes care of the graphical design of SUMit application for many years to follow.

2005, tailored factory planning

• New customers for the shift roster design workshop and the on line shift roster software keep on coming.
• SUMit supplies tailored softare to software house Woodwing, making their web application multi lingual using UTF-8.
• SUMit designs a web application where supply and demand meet for the Spanish Market Found.
• A Dutch site of the Swedisch multinational SCA (well known by brand names Libero, Libresse, Tena Lady, Mr. Edet) approches SUMit for a staff plannign system. It is a complex project, for 40 decentral planners.

2006, Returning customers

• A team of international software specialist cooperates via internet. Extensions to the SCA staff planning systems come from:
  • Heijen, Limburg, the Netherlands
  • Gouda, Holland
  • Halle, Belgium,
  • Taiping, Malaysia,
  • Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia;,
  • Kiruna, Sweden.
• In addition to SCA, SUMit welcomes other big companies as DHL Schiphol, Philips and tourist board Amsterdam as returning customers. They appreciate SUMit's way of doing business, find it worth repeating.

2007, small multi national

• During the anniversary, 10 years of SUMit, SUMit greets new international customers such as the Royal Australian Navy in Sydney.
• Leonard Verhoef has a strong influence on the web based shift roster software. The software becomes easy to use, suited to the power of the human mind.
• The painting artist Johan van den Boom translates ideas and concepts into images.
• The number of customers for the workshop shift roster design reaches a new high. Even a Royal House finds SUMit's to create a shift roster for two royal palaces.

2008, Svenska

• The whole of the Netherlands now know about the SUMit workshop for designing shift rosters.
• During long Swedish summer days SUMit cooperates with Johan van den Boom for SCA planningsystem.
• Henk Jan works on a method to design information, based on the function psychology of Dr. Leonard Verhoef.
• The first paper prototypes based on the new design method see Swedish light.

2009, Senang, shift roster generator

• SUMit develops Senang, the generator for shift roster.
• SCA is the first customer to order a generator for the automatic distribution of task of safety staff.