I founded Skyblue Systems along with four of my colleagues from GE Corporate Research & Development (CRD) in January 1995.  The mission of Skyblue Systems is to provide expert consulting services and software in electromagnetics and related areas to industry and government.  Our tag line is, "Complex problems; desktop solutions."  Our first office was located in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Incubator Center on Peoples Avenue in Troy, New York.

Starting a new business was an exciting time for all of us because every day we did things we had not done before.  Early in our first year of operation, an auditor from the Department of Defense visited our office to qualify us to receive a Navy subcontract.  He asked us what type of accounting system we were using.  Our treasurer looked at me, and I looked at him.  He finally pulled out our corporate checkbook and told the auditor it contained all of our financial information.  The auditor laughed and asked us were we all engineers?  He was nice about it and suggested we get a PC software program to handle our books.  We consulted an Albany accounting firm specializing in small businesses and our treasurer became an expert at keeping our books with the Peachtree accounting program.

One of the biggest challenges at Skyblue Systems was to redevelop the software that we had created at GE.  When we left GE, we did not take our source code.  Of course, we retained the knowledge of how the programs worked.  Starting from scratch did have one positive aspect:  We were able to improve the software by programming using modern object-oriented techniques in the C++ language and by incorporating more efficient algorithms.

In addition to lower overhead, an advantage of having a company separate from GE was our ability to market our software and consulting services to other companies.  We have worked with Martin Marietta, Amp, Allied Signal, Intermagnetics General Corporation, and Schlumberger.  Although GE remains our largest customer, we always welcome new companies.

Some of the original founders have since left Skyblue to pursue other professional actives.  However, the core business remains in operation with myself as president.

If you would like to learn more about Skyblue Systems, click on our logo:

Last update: February 07, 2003