CIA WORK YIELDS NEW WRINKLE IN SOFTWARE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85B01152R000700910055-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 27, 2008
• Sequence Number: 55
• Publication Date: February 15, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2008/06/27: CIA-RDP85BO1152R000700910055-3
MIN17?EAPOLIS STAR AIN'D KIRU* (MNN )
15 FE3RUARY 1983
CIA work yields new
1v v ~~rtftz k I e i Iftl s of t ware
By Steve Gross
Staff Writer
At any rate, the consultants' new
company, called Pentanet, was
unched in 1980 to continue the CIA
la
Question: Who delivers copies of
Pravda, the Soviet Communist Party project after the university's partici-
newspaper, to all of President Rea- pation had ended. They were joined
in the vepture by Ivey Iversen, a
gin's men? computer business consultant who
now is chairman of the firm, and
puler system used by the CIA and ` ` .."" ' ?""""y`"" ---
created by a group of University of firm earned $150,000 working on the
Minnesota computer designers who CIA project
And now the St. Paul company hopes-
the expertise it developed through
its spy connection will enable it to
market its computer systems to li-
b,, cri es, nursing homes and hospitals,
government service agencies and
corporations.
The reason: Sedna's founders think
they have learned how to leap the
that se a'-ates modern comput-
By 1981, the founders decided to
sever all ties with the university so
they could develop and sell the new
software in the business world,
Lourey said. Last year the founders
renamed the company Sedna Corp.
after an Eskimo sea goddess. In ad-
dition to Lourey and Iversen, the
founders of the firm are Richard
Mann, Rolf Peterson, Colleen Maiers
Traviss and Don Norris.
dw The key to success, Lourey said, will
th "harare") from the anti-
e
That's partly because Sedna will re-
sell Digital Equipment Corp. mini.
computers without all the expensive
standard software. With Sedna, there
is no operating system containing ba-
sic computer instructions, no pro-
gram written by a human program-
mer in computer languages like For-
tran or Cobol, and no language trans-
lator, or. compiler, to convert the
program Into computer code, Lourey
said.
Another advantage is that Sedna soft-
ware makes the computer operate
more efficiently, enabling it to do
the same job as a much larger com-
puter, Lourey said. And the system is
cheaper to operate because no pro-
grammers are needed.
The new software approach and the
improved computer efficiency com-
bine to create a $20,000 to $500,000
Sedna computer system that can re-'
place a large $1.5 million to $3 mil-
lion computer system, he said.
? Clearly, the company believes it is
on to something the rest of the com-
puter industry has missed. "Existing
software is obsolete, and everybody
'knows it," Lourey said.
en (
be what they accomplished for the
qhe programming, instructions y The competition between the com-
(the " "s software") that make them op- CIA. "It's a-very-'demanding applica- puler manufacturers is at the hard-
crate. "It's widely believed that soft- lion, and this (University of Minneso- ware level," said Iversen.
ware is 15 years behind hardware," ' ta-developed) software was.the best
Sedna president Eugene Lourey said. they (the CIA) could find," he said.. What stands between Sedna and fi-
"That may be too generous." '!We saved the CiA an enormous nancial success, Lourey said, are the
amount of money," perhaps three tight budgets of potential computer
The company's great leap forward
began when the CIA decided it need-
ed a special computer system that,
would sort "tons of mail every day"
- and sort it so that the most impor-
tant government officials got their
copies of foreign publications first,
Lourey said.
First, the CIA contracted with the
University of Minnesota in 1977 to
adapt the university's biomedical li-
brary computer system. During that
two-year, $10,000 contract, the
founders of Sedna worked on the
project as university employees.
Later, while still working at the uiu
versity, they took over the project as
private consultants because "the uni-
versity was uncomfortable with CIA
linkage directly to the university,"
Lourey said. "They wanted us to do
it on our consulting time."
University biomedical library direc-
tor Glenn Brudvig disagreed. "I don't
think there was any priciple or poli-
cy (of the university) involved" in
shifting the CIA project to the consul-
tants, he said.
spent on the-project, he added. computer users to abandon their ?
huge investments in - conventional
What the CIA liked about Sedna's computer software.
software was that it doesn't require
any computer programming skills. It While the privately held, nine-em-
eliminates elaborate- computer Ian- ployee firm doesn't disclose details
guages and substitutes a "fill in the of its finances. Iversen said the com-
blanks", approach that allows a non- pany will make enough sales to
.technical person to create programs break even on expenses for the fis-
on a computer screen, Lourey said. cal year ending in June.; - ?
That also means the Sedna software.
can be shaped to fit the needs of
each person who uses the computer.
This radicaL'approach will make a
Sedna? computer system, called a
SIMS-I, much cheaper to buy and to
operate than other computers,
' Lourey said. .
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Approved For Release 2008/06/27: CIA-RDP85BO1152R000700910055-3
 Approved For Release 2008/06/27: CIA-RDP85BO1152R000700910055-3
? .
0
Five of the founders of Sedrta ?Corp.,-froni left: trey lversen,-Colleen
Maiere Traviss,flichard Mann;#toff Peterson and Eugene Lauren:.- -~
Staff Photo by Tom Sweeney - ; ? {
Approved For Release 2008/06/27: CIA-RDP85BO1152R000700910055-3