Completion of the Spreadsheet

VisiCalc™ was introduced in 1979 as the first spreadsheet and is often considered as the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby into a serious business tool. VisiCalc became the grandmother to all spreadsheet applications today, and is often referred to as the most successful software application in history.

The success of the spreadsheet is due primarily to the ability of combining development, application and data into a single simple, intuitive and versatile environment for the entry maintenance of business data. It is truly addictive due to high data visibility and productivity. For this reason, the spreadsheet continues to rule the day in nearly all companies, from the smallest to the largest corporations.

However, spreadsheets have serious limitations and are often pressed into business situations that far exceed their capability. These limitations have not been addressed since its inception, rendering the spreadsheet application incomplete and falling short of a truly powerful and enduring software application. The biggest limitation with spreadsheets is that they are islands of data to themselves and cannot simultaneously share data between multiple users with a back-end database. Other limitations include column label management, improved data security, hierarchy row management, collapse and expansion of columns, toggle between single and multiple records, compound cells, etc. If these limitations were addressed, a paradigm shift might occur in the enterprise software industry and forever change the way software is developed and deployed. This was the original idea behind Fluidapps.

The original design premise behind Fluidapps was to build on the success of the spreadsheet, address the limitations and extend the spreadsheet concept into a truly powerful enterprise application development and delivery tool. Fluidapps has the simple, intuitive and productive environment of spreadsheets, but has the power and depth to deliver robust enterprise applications. Users with few technical skills can become productive immediately by defining columns and entering data, adding sophistication and depth to the application later as knowledge of the product increases.