March 1, 2015 marked a very special milestone for Resource Software International Limited (RSI). The company was founded exactly 25 years to the date. Little did two young entrepreneurs know that a basement operation, boasting a 286 PC, a dot matrix printer and two-line telephone, would spawn a global brand deployed in over 14000 locations. Customers include Fortune 500 companies, hospitality chains, government agencies, sports and leisure organizations, educational institutions and healthcare providers.
In 1990, Rito Salomone and Steve Cummings, childhood friends who attended grade school, high school and university together took a calculated gamble founding a company in the growing field of telecommunications. It was a time when telephone call control and cost recovery were at the forefront of the minds of communication managers, comptrollers, hoteliers and professional firms. The cost of long distance calls, if left unchecked, could cripple a company. There was a growing need for accountability and reconciliation of telecom changes. There were few affordable management tools available to small business and enterprise alike. Resource Software International Limited was born.
The company quickly found a niche offering telecom expense management services. There was great competition after telecom deregulation. This meant that long distance providers desperately needed tools to differentiate their long distance services over the competition. RSI offered carrier comparison analytics using scanned telephone invoices. RSI leveraged internally developed technology to allow discount providers to demonstrate the savings they offered using concrete historical data. This technology would later become the kernel of their first commercial product.
In 1992, the company's flagship application, Telecost voice & data management call accounting software, was released for use on disk operating system (DOS). Adoption ramped up slowly due to the company's limited resources, poor visibility and few resale partners. However, some key industry wins including a fortune 500 insurance company, a major hospitality chain and an alliance with a large telecom gear provider vaulted RSI into prominence.
In the mid 1990s, RSI developed relationships with several major telephone companies, equipment manufacturers, property management companies and cost recovery specialists. By 1998, the growth of Telecost for Windows (later rebranded as Shadow CMS Enterprise) was exponential. The company was consistently exceeding double digit growth projections and became a key player in telecom expense management. Partner relationships with key equipment manufacturers gave RSI credibility and greater reach in major markets.
The RSI product spectrum was properly designed for the fast approaching year 2000 date apocalypse. The year leading up to that famed milestone date forced telecom managers around the globe to upgrade call accounting and telecom billing systems. This was a major opportunity for RSI to rip and replace dated competitor systems that did not adhere to the millennium compliance.
In August 2000, RSI acquired the assets of Revolution Software, a call accounting company formerly located in Needham, MA with a strong partner roster that included major telephone companies and service providers. RSI folded the portfolio into its own offerings and expanded its international presence with new solutions for instant messaging, customer interaction and business automation.
In May 2007, RSI acquired MerAssistant, from PBXInfo LCC, located in Dallas, TX. MerAssistant (later renamed to Shadow SA), was a switch management application for moves, adds and changes (MACs) to telephony equipment. Still available today as Shadow SA Switch Administrator, the product was added to the company's growing spectrum of communication management solutions. Shadow SA became popular among telecom managers because it often removed the need for expensive calls to technicians for minor equipment configuration changes.
In December 2007, RSI launched a new
hosted call accounting service becoming one of the first cloud based telephone call tracking offering. This service was aimed at small business customers with limited resources that required telephone reporting. The subscription model made it affordable to customers of all sizes. In October 2008, RSI added a series of online website portals for tracking, managing and sending text and mobile messages.
From its early roots, the RSI portfolio has undergone numerous iterations as our products have evolved from a single processor single thread infrastructure to a enterprise grade, desktop and cloud based, distributed architecture, SQL engine, multi-site total unified communication management solution. SHADOW CMS Enterprise has been deployed in various industry segments including healthcare, hospitality, retail, professional and general business environments. Today, RSI specialists provide products, training and resources that manage, control and reduce the expense of an entire communication ecosystem.. Our products are internationally accepted and lab tested by global equipment manufacturers including Avaya, Cisco, ShoreTel, Mitel, Adtran and Digium.
In February 2015, RSI unveiled a new responsive website to coincide with its 25 anniversary year and the launch of several new cloud based variations of our popular portfolio. We hope to continue building great solutions that enhance your productivity and beef up your bottom line for many more years.
Thank you to our partners and our customers for your allegiance.
