The Longest Goodbye
Baseline Magazine has a great article chronicling the retirement of Reader's Digest Unified File System (UFS) -- or the elegant old lady, as it came to be known. What is amazing in the story, is not that Reader's Digest was retiring a system, but the system itself that was being retired. It was ahead of its time, built with foresight that seemed miraculous, and survived much longer than anyone ever thought it would -- then again, I'm sure some never thought they would see the end of it.
Born in November of 1969, the system was at the heart of Reader's Digest business. It was,
It was built at a time when bytes were not a commodity. The mainframe could only handle 64K in memory, and limited memory meant that everything had to be coded in base 16. It was a system built to keep the records of up to 50 million customer on a single file, at a time when the US population was only 57.4 million, according to the US Census Bureau. The system was built open for future modifications and changes by the users -- this also at a time when everything was hardcoded, and system engineers were like magicians tending their computers. No one could make changes to system parameters without the engineers and programmers. Despite the times, the foresight with which the UFS was built, allowed it to survive for 35 years -- and gave Reader's Digest a first entry advantage in creating what may have been the world's first CRM system.
The article reads like a history lesson. It was informative, and entertaining.
Born in November of 1969, the system was at the heart of Reader's Digest business. It was,
"The first system to unify tens of millions of names and addresses from different businesses into one file and then, add a record of every marketing contact made with each customer. And then, add a record of every product sent to the customer. And then, a record of every payment, as well. Decades before the idea took hold that there was such a thing, The Reader's Digest Association was compiling a "360-degree view" of each of its customers and allowing its direct marketing operation to figure out how much profit a campaign might produce, before the first envelope was sent out."
It was built at a time when bytes were not a commodity. The mainframe could only handle 64K in memory, and limited memory meant that everything had to be coded in base 16. It was a system built to keep the records of up to 50 million customer on a single file, at a time when the US population was only 57.4 million, according to the US Census Bureau. The system was built open for future modifications and changes by the users -- this also at a time when everything was hardcoded, and system engineers were like magicians tending their computers. No one could make changes to system parameters without the engineers and programmers. Despite the times, the foresight with which the UFS was built, allowed it to survive for 35 years -- and gave Reader's Digest a first entry advantage in creating what may have been the world's first CRM system.
The article reads like a history lesson. It was informative, and entertaining.
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