Press Release
Mar 2007
AlphaLAW founder electedChartered Fellow of British Computer Society
John Meehan, the founder of AlphaLAW (Management Support Systems ltd) and author of the original accounting, time recording, case management and debt recovery systems has been elected a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society.
On leaving college in the late 50s John worked for Cable & Wireless as a design engineer. He then moved to Honeywell as an engineer working on large computer systems. Due to his experience in the communications industry, he was given responsibility for the implementation of the very first computer based communication systems utilising the new visual display units that were then becoming available. John was then co-opted into a small team of engineers and system designers responsible for the design and implementation of all major communication systems installed in the UK by Honeywell. During this period John was involved in much research and development of database and transaction processing principles and techniques that are today considered as standard procedures. He wrote many papers and articles and lectured on these new design concepts.
After spending a period in marketing, being responsible for a range of small mainframe systems, John left Honeywell to join a small group of software engineers who were designing a communications orientated mainframe operating system. This product was highly successful, being used on a complete range of Honeywell systems throughout the world. During that time, the micro computer, the predecessor of the PC, was invented. John and his colleagues researched the use of these new machines within the commercial environment. One of the applications designed was a legal accounting system based upon the then new transaction processing techniques. This became so successful that he founded what was to become AlphaLAW with the software becoming one of the most widely used legal systems available.
John is still very much involved with software design being the architect of the AlphaLAW-claimIT system together with holding the position as chairman of AlphaLAW.
“I have been very fortunate in my professional life to have worked with and alongside some of the brightest and inventive people in the evolving computer industry - from LEO (the first commercial computer) engineers to the inventor of the integrated database concept. The term 'on the shoulders of giants' springs to mind. From these people, and the problems we had to solve, some of today's computer standards were evolved. I feel highly honoured to have had been elected a Fellow of a society that I feel has done much to apply professional standards to this industry"