Sterling Software

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Sterling Software is a defunct American software company founded by Sterling Williams in 1980. The company was acquired by Computer Associates in 2000.

It is best known for its aggressive acquisitions most notably the hostile take-over of Informatics General Inc, in 1985. Informatics was one of the first established software and services company. It developed the MARK-IV Fourth-generation programming language in the 1960s. MARK-IV became the first software pacakge exceeding USD 1 million in revenue, after IBM was forced in 1969 to unbundle software from their hardware.

Helped by wise financing and conseled by Werner Frank, one of Informatics co-founder, who had left this company a year before, Sterling Software started the hostile take over by offering to shareholders an interesting price per share and increasing it slowly until Informatics board was no more able to reject it. Overnight, Sterling Software became a USD 200 million in revenue company up from USD20M. After only 2 years, they started again acquiring new companies. ^[1]

Acquired Informatics in 1985.

Acquired KnowledgeWare in 1994.

Acquired the Software Division from Texas Instruments in 1997, including the rights to IEF.

Acquired Cayenne Software in 1998.