BASIS is 20 years old! During these two decades, BASIS leveraged the booms and survived the busts, and through it all, gained great market strength and emerged triumphant. Today, we continue to maintain a firm financial foundation while executing a progressive plan for the future. Not bad for a small software company based in a city most people have never heard of or thought was located in 'old' Mexico!

When BASIS began in 1985, the three founders hired me as their dedicated generalist to cover all the non-technical work, since their talents more than covered the technical aspects. Over the years, I managed various facets of the operations at BASIS from Office Manager/Janitor to my current role of COO. With my various titles came an assortment of rather colorful names. But ask me what I would call myself, I would say lucky to have been a part of the birth of BASIS and fortunate to be a part of a company that matured and succeeded far beyond the vision of those original founders.

With an anniversary comes a time to contemplate and celebrate, so journey with me through both. As I recall our beginning, I remember how we distributed BBx® on a stack of floppy disks and ¼ inch tape with documentation in linen binders and slipcases. I remember the thousands of dollars we invested in media duplication equipment, the 5,000 square foot warehouse, and the $90,000+ expense to print each documentation run. All this produced an incredible volume of tangibles that made us UPS' largest volume private shipper in Albuquerque.

Since then, we happily recycled the software duplication equipment, vacated the warehouse, and eliminated the publishing budget from our operating expenses. BASIS product and documentation are now instantly available worldwide, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day via electronic download.

Our greatest assets continue to be our staff and our customers, giving us good reason to celebrate. BASIS enjoys the reputation of being a company in which people aspire to work. In an industry with incredibly high turnover, 21% of our current staff has been employed at BASIS over ten years, 45% for over five years, and 18% returned after once departing. Retaining employees is only part of our story - customer preservation is just as impressive. Our current customer list includes dozens of companies that joined BASIS in the beginning (see the Open Systems, Inc. success story on page 6). As a result, our incredibly talented employees and exceptionally committed customers all have made significant contributions to the success and longevity of BBx.

Good business decisions also contribute greatly to BBx's success. Over the years, BASIS tried earnestly to foresee which platforms would survive and determine which features to add next. Today, BASIS invests in the Java platform for delivering a cross-platform GUI and CUI product incorporating modern language features. These features include developer defined objects, a new VKEYED file type in the BASIS DBMS, and enhanced development tools such as a re-engineered GUIBuilder® integrated as AppBuilder inside the BASIS IDE; all of which we preview in this special anniversary edition. Since the market requires innovation and innovation requires capital, we continue to invest a significant percentage of our revenues into ongoing research and development, thereby securing our future. Our secure future helps secure your future.

After all these years, through many changes in technology and the industry, our goal is still really quite simple. The best application coupled with a sound business strategy wins; so we continue to dedicate our efforts to provide you with the best tools to build the best applications while also partnering with our customers to develop winning business strategies. BASIS will surely celebrate many more decades of success, driven by your success. We want you to be partners with us, helping to write the next chapter in the BASIS history book.

Peggy Lewis Chief Operating Officer

George Hight Chief Executive Officer Dr. Kevin King Chief Information Officer Nico Spence Chief Marketing Officer Peggy Lewis Chief Operating Officer