|
MAINSTAY SOFTWARE ANNOUNCED AS EXCLUSIVE PROVIDER OF CATALYST DATA’S
RAPIDBOM TELECOM NETWORK ESTIMATING TOOL
ENGLEWOOD, Colo., -- Mainstay Software Corporation (Mainstay) today announced
the completion of its partnership with Athens, Alabama, based, Catalyst Data as the exclusive provider for RapidBOM, a complete
ISP and OSP telecommunications network development system, product and support, and Mainstay could not be more pleased.
“We are very excited to have RapidBOM as the newest member of Mainstay’s
suite of proposal pricing, source selection and estimating software,” said Dan Walkovitz, president of Mainstay. “We
have been working with Catalyst Data for a number of years now to further develop and refine this excellent tool and its market
positioning, and we are excited to reintroduce it to the commercial and government markets.”
Despite the recent economic slowdown, Government agencies have approximately
$8 billion to spend annually for infrastructure improvements, including telecommunications networks.
With Mainstay’s established presence in the Government market due to
widespread use of its PPAS Pricing Proposal and Analysis System software, the company intends to focus its distribution efforts
on Government agencies and their contractors.
As an added attraction for this market, RapidBOM integrates naturally with
PPAS to facilitate completion of sophisticated Government proposals. However, Mainstay will continue to aggressively expand
RapidBOM’s presence to commercial contractors and the telecommunications products manufacturing community.
According to a Computer Reseller News research survey, 31% of small businesses
are going to upgrade their existing networks and 41% of small businesses without a network are going to be installing a network.
According to the SBA, there are 50,000 small businesses started each month
in the United States and there are currently thousands of companies that engineer network infrastructures.
“The time is right for RapidBOM,” said Dan Walkovitz, president
of Mainstay Software Corporation. “The traditional manual spreadsheet process encumbered by flipping through hundreds
of paper catalogs or accessing manufacturers’ Web sites one at a time to find the product you need is an option of the
past. RapidBOM users will be hooked in short order as they begin to produce more accurate designs faster without the traditional
tedious and time-consuming process of product search and validation.”
RapidBOM is a complete telecommunications network estimating system that automatically
creates a Bill of Materials (BOM), including both material and labor costs, needed to totally design a network from the faceplate
to the router. RapidBOM contains a regularly updated database of key product information from cabling manufacturers as well
as NECA labor rates and standards. In all, more than 100,000 products from in excess of 130 telecommunications manufacturers
are represented in the database.
“RapidBOM is an invaluable telecommunications estimating product with
the most comprehensive database of telecommunications-specific products ever created and made available commercially,”
Walkovitz said. “It was developed by telecommunications professionals for telecommunications professionals.”
RapidBOM has a proven ability to enable telecommunications network designers
and estimators to produce higher quality estimates much more quickly than the traditional manual process, and to do this as
part of the design process. Current users of RapidBOM have found the tool to reduce their design and estimating time by as
much as 90 percent.
RapidBOM also boasts internal artificial intelligence that checks the design
against BICSI and other industry standards, thus limiting errors in the design process by preventing an estimator from creating
a substandard design. RapidBOM ensures that all of the parts of a network build have been accounted for so that bids are fully
priced and no time is lost on site for lack of appropriate materials.
“RapidBOM allowed me to generate two estimates in less than 30 minutes.
The same task being accomplished via the 'spreadsheet' estimating method would have easily taken 3-4 hours, said Lomac Information
Systems, Inc., Federal Account Manager John Lomac. “I had confidence that every jack in every room was accounted for.
I also feel that I have a much better handle on the overall project when I am estimating with RapidBOM.”
Other current RapidBOM customers include: Avaya Communications, General Dynamics,
Raytheon, SI International and a handful of government agencies, including the Unites States Army.
Mainstay Software Corporation was founded in June 1983 in Colorado. The company
was established to continue developing and marketing Mainstay’s one-of-a-kind OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) database,
MAINSTAY, which was developed in the early 1980s at Corporate Management Systems, Inc., a decision support consulting company.
From 1984 to 1986, Mainstay was successful in developing and marketing several
versions of the MAINSTAY product. In 1986, Mainstay Software began to focus its attention on the aerospace/defense industry.
PPAS (Proposal Pricing & Analysis System), the company’s flagship product was developed using MAINSTAY and was introduced
in 1989. Today, it is used by many government contractors for preparation, analysis and presentation of proposals, as well
as for the analysis and evaluation of proposals by government agencies themselves.
RapidBOM is a registered trademark of Catalyst Data.
| 
