The original idea for Intalio came to Ismael Ghalimi (CEO, co-founder) in late 1998. At the time, Ismael had just finished his Masters degree in Computer Science, and was dabbling with Java and PHP to develop some online applications for a bank and a local government agency in Nantes, France. He found Java way too complex, and PHP not scalable enough. Not one to be afraid of tackling an ambitious project, he set out to fix this situation by creating a new software development platform that non-technical people could use to build new applications. According to his original vision, this platform should be as easy to use as Multiplan (Microsoft's first spreadsheet editor), and provide an aesthetically pleasing user interface like Mathematica (Steven Wolfram's amazing software). He had used the first when he was 12 years old to build a management system for sporting events at his middle school, and had been exposed to the second right before heading to a six-weeks internship in Europe's deepest coal mine at his engineering school. Intalio's original architecture was actually drawn on a napkin, and looked eerily similar to the architecture of Intalio|Cloud as it stands today.

 

Next chapter to be published on June 14.