Software developer HASP records 50% profit growth

LOVELAND — Last year, HASP Inc. had a banner year.

The Loveland-based, family-owned software manufacturing company and Hewlett-Packard Co. reseller increased profits 50 percent, earning a little more than $3.5 million by the end of 1997.

HASP continued to earn the best “in class” reseller designation from H-P for its handling of the high-end UNIX operating system. The company’s performance has also helped it sustain what H-P computer organization sales manager Jack Nicholson calls a win-win relationship.

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“They have an outstanding reputation with H-P,” he said. “They are in the top 10 percent of our resellers nationwide of the 100 who sell the UNIX system.”

The rating was based on the capabilities of all the resellers’ customer satisfaction and volume of sales, he said.

Nicholson said that his role with HASP and the 10 other resellers for H-P is to work with companies that are looking for a solution, or piece of software, then team them up with companies that provide what they want using H-P platforms, or hardware.

“When companies like HASP sell the software, they also sell our hardware. They win, we win,” he said.

The relationship between Ronnie Hogan, HASP president, and H-P was auspicious from the beginning. Before becoming a reseller, Hogan worked as a subcontractor in the late ’60s in the creation of H-P’s first civil engineer and surveying programmable disk called the HP 90100. H-P marketed and sold that product.

The software HASP sells today is also wedded to H-P. It’s designed to work only on H-P’s UNIX system, the operating system for larger business applications. HASP is unusual that way, Nicholson said. Most software companies make their product usable on a variety of UNIX-type operating systems. HASP received a license to resell in 1976 after Hogan was able to demonstrate the value of his new software product.

As far as HASP’s market is concerned, it’s primarily surveying and engineering companies. Hogan and his wife, Shirley Austin Hogan, began HASP in 1975 as an offshoot of Hogan and Olhausen, a civil-engineering and surveying company that has since changed its name to Landmark.

HASP has eight employees. Two are programmers. Two provide technical support. The remaining employees provide office support services.

Austin Hogan, co-owner with husband, Ronnie, said the software has been used to speed up the work for stringing utilities in Wyoming as well as to create maps from aerial photos.

Bigger companies across the nation with a need for large operating systems seek out HASP for both software and hardware. Business isn’t local. Most of the company’s advertising is in trade magazines and trade shows. East Coast users are more common, because, Austin Hogan said, “On the East Coast, they have more work and bigger volumes.”

Engineering businesses are especially interested with what HASP has to offer, she said.

“We have a growing market for hardware sales,” she said. “As a reseller, we sell Hewlett-Packard equipment, including work stations and printers.”

In fact, she said, the sale of H-P equipment accounts for the majority of the company’s income.

“We sell to chip manufacturers, for example,” she said. “But all industry uses computers. We hope to be a provider of those computers.”

She said all shipping and packaging is done from the HASP’s 2707 W. Eisenhower Blvd. address. A high level of technical support is possible because of the company’s knowledge of the product. HASP monitors usage of all the equipment it sells. For the software, support services, maintenance and updates are provided.

Austin Hogan said that because of the computer-related business they are in, change is constant.

“The majority of the time we install the equipment depending upon the sophistication of the system,” she said. “We’re always updating software and training on new Hewlett Packard equipment. It pretty much changes every six months.”