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ASK Group, Inc., formerly ASK Computer Systems, Inc., was a producer of business and manufacturing software. It is best remembered for its MANMAN enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and for Sandra Kurtzig, the company's dynamic founder and one of the early female pioneers in the computer industry. At its peak, ASK had 91 offices in 15 countries before Computer Associates acquired the company in 1994. ==Beginning and growth (1972–1982)== ASK was started in 1972 by Sandra Kurtzig in California. Sandra Kurtzig quit her job as a marketing specialist at General Electric and invested $2,000 of her savings to start the company in her apartment. At first, the firm built software for a variety of business applications. ASK was incorporated in 1974. In 1978, Kurtzig came up with ASK's most significant product, named MANMAN (originally "MaMa"), a contraction of ''manufacturing management''. MANMAN was an ERP program that ran on Hewlett-Packard minicomputers. MANMAN helped manufacturing companies plan materials purchases, production schedules, and other administrative functions on a scale that was previously possible only on large, costly mainframe computers. MANMAN initially had a five-figure software price and was aimed at small and medium-sized manufacturers. Small companies desiring the least expensive implementation could use the software on a time-sharing contract. MANMAN was a huge success and quickly came to dominate the market for manufacturing systems and software. ASK's fortunes rose as a result. The corporation went public in 1981. Two years later, Sandra Kurtzig's personal stake in the firm was worth $67 million. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「ASK Group」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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