Murray Hayden Haszard (born 11 May 1954) is a

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...

entrepreneur and businessman who founded the companies

B32 Software B32 Business Basic was a competitor to Data General Business Basic written by Murray Haszard in 1986. It ran on the Data General Eclipse MV line of computers initially, and was ported to Unix in 1989 and to DOS in 1991. B32 Software was the company ...

and

Binary Research Binary Research Ltd was a company founded in Auckland, New Zealand by Murray Haszard in 1991 after the sale of his previous company, B32 Software. Binary Research initially considered developing competitors to the file transfer programs Blast an ...

and is the chairman of Ilion Technology.

B32 Software

In 1983 he was contracted to convert Kiwi Packaging's corrugator scheduling package Kiwiplan from

Data General Business Basic Data General Business Basic was a BASIC interpreter (based on a version from MAI Basic Four) marketed by Data General for their Nova minicomputer in the 1970s, and later ported to the Data General Eclipse MV and AViiON computers. Most busines ...

to Fortran 77 on a

Data General Data General Corporation was one of the first minicomputer firms of the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Their first product, 1969's Data General Nova, was a 16-bit minicompute ...

MV computer. He found that Fortran had fast number-crunching but slow disk access, difficult debugging and inability to share files without using system calls, and Business Basic had slow arithmetic and limited memory space, but easy debugging and convenient handling of file sharing. After leaving Kiwi Packaging he attempted to create a language which shared the virtues of both. B32 Business Basic took three years to write, but it was technically superior to Data General's Business Basic. Haszard expected that the world would beat a path to his door, but potential customers were conservative about using a new product, and doubtful that it could be supported from New Zealand. With the help particularly of George Henne and Maxon, a Toronto-based software reseller, B32 established a customer base and developed a reputation for performance in the Data General world. Selling and supporting B32 required frequent exhausting trips to North America and Europe. Haszard expanded his company with an extra support programmer, but B32 continued to grow and was ported to the

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...

operating system. A sales and support branch of B32 Software opened in

Blue Ash, Ohio Blue Ash is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio. An inner suburb of Cincinnati, the population was 12,114 at the time of the 2010 census. History The area that is now Blue Ash was settled around 1791. In 1797, the first settlers built Carpenter' ...

in 1990, but the demands of running a business only increased. Haszard wasn't having fun any more, and when his chief competition, Transoft offered to buy him out, he accepted. B32 sold for US$800,000 in February 1992.

Binary Research

Haszard's next venture was

, a company composed initially of former B32 employees. Binary Research's first product, a parallel file transfer utility, failed to reach break-even in the market, but led to the concept of a disk cloning program,

Ghost A ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to re ...

. Ghost was a huge success, coming just as

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

created a demand for disk cloning. The huge growth of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

made software marketing and support around the world much simpler than before. A sales and support office in North America was set up, and a network of agents established around the world. Haszard brought in a business partner, Gray Treadwell, to help manage the business, and increased his programming staff manyfold. The stress of managing an international business became intolerable for Haszard, and he looked for a buyer for Ghost.

Symantec Symantec may refer to: *An American consumer software company now known as Gen Digital Inc. *A brand of enterprise security software purchased by Broadcom Inc. Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier ...

purchased Ghost for US$27.5 million in July 1998. Most of the employees of Binary Research became employees of Symantec.

After Ghost

Haszard set up Skunkworks Software with his remaining employees, producing a program called "Focus" which he describes as "PowerPoint on steroids". He also diversified from software into innovative aircraft propeller design. He was quoted in ''Unlimited'' magazine's November 2000 issue as saying "I miss the adrenaline rush I had with Ghost and B32. There was a real fight for survival. I miss that." Haszard invested in the New Zealand technology company Ilion Technology, which sold highly purified

lithium Lithium (from el, λίθος, lithos, lit=stone) is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense soli ...

metal to

battery Battery most often refers to: * Electric battery, a device that provides electrical power * Battery (crime), a crime involving unlawful physical contact Battery may also refer to: Energy source *Automotive battery, a device to provide power t ...

manufacturers and was also developing its own advanced battery designs. Ilion Technology planned to list itself on the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

stockmarket in 2000, but was unable to do so due to the fall of the markets. Ilion was left with much higher expenditure than income, and no cash reserves. Haszard and other investors kept the company afloat while it was reorganised, and he stepped in when the previous chairman lost the confidence of shareholders. Despite further efforts to fund the company, Ilion Technology ceased operations in 2007 Haszard is the founder and chairman of Sprite Software, which makes software for backing up mobile devices and smart phones. Some of the other developers from Binary Research also work there.Haszard charts smart new course involving backup for ‘personalised’ mobile devices

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Haszard, Murray 1954 births Living people New Zealand businesspeople