Comprehensive Electronic Office, often referred to by its initialism CEO, was a suite of office automation software from

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 minicompu ...

introduced in 1981. It included

word processing A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consen ...

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

spreadsheets A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in cel ...

, business graphics and desktop accessories. The software was developed mostly in

PL/I PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. It ...

on and for the AOS and AOS/VS operating systems.

Overview

CEO was considered office automation software, which was an attempt to create a

paperless office A paperless office (or paper-free office) is a work environment in which the use of paper is eliminated or greatly reduced. This is done by converting documents and other papers into digital form, a process known as digitization. Proponents claim t ...

. CEO has also been cited as an example of an

executive information system An executive information system (EIS), also known as an executive support system (ESS), is a type of management support system that facilitates and supports senior executive information and decision-making needs. It provides easy access to internal ...

and as a

decision support system A decision support system (DSS) is an information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations and planning levels of an organization (usually mid and higher management) and ...

. It included a main program known as the Control Program, which offered a menu driven interface on the assorted

dumb terminals A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal a ...

which existed at the time. The Control Program communicated with separate "Services" like the Mail Server, Calendar Server, File Server (for documents). There was also a Word Processor and a data management program which was also accessible from the Control Program. In 1985, Data General announced a complementary product, TEO (Technical Electronic Office), focused on the office automation needs of engineering professionals. In later years, CEO offerings grew to include various products to connect to CEO from early personal computers. The first such product was called CEO Connection. Later a product named CEO Object Office shipped which repackaged HP NewWave (an object oriented graphical interface). CEO code was heavily dependent on the INFOS II database. When Data General moved from the Eclipse MV platform to the

AViiON Aviion (styled AViiON) was a series of computers from Data General that were the company's main product from the late 1980s until the company's server products were discontinued in 2001. Earlier Aviion models used the Motorola 88000 CPU, but later ...

, CEO was not ported to the new platform as the cost would have been prohibitive. CEO was often compared with IBM's offering, commonly called PROFS. CEO offered integration with

DISOSS IBM Distributed Office Support System, or DISOSS is a centralized document distribution and filing application for IBM's mainframe computers running the MVS and VSE operating systems. DISOSS runs under both the CICS transaction processing syste ...

and SNADS. CEO also supported

Xodiac 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 ...

, Data General's proprietary networking system. In 1989, Data General unveiled an email gateway product, Communications Server, which provided interoperability of CEO with

X.400 X.400 is a suite of ITU-T Recommendations that defines the ITU-T Message Handling System (MHS). At one time, the designers of X.400 were expecting it to be the predominant form of email, but this role has been taken by the SMTP-based Internet e-m ...

email systems and X.500 directories. One early CEO site, Deutsche Credit in Chicago, first installed CEO while it was under beta in 1980, and by 1986 had 80 users of the product. Other users included the

U.S. Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 United States National Forest, national forests and 20 United States Nationa ...

, who installed CEO in 1983, and whose CEO system fell victim to a hacking attack in December 1984. CEO was also formerly used by

Health and Welfare Canada The Department of National Health and Welfare (NHW), commonly known as Health and Welfare Canada, was a Canadian federal department established in 1944. Its advisory body on welfare was the National Council of Welfare. In June 1993, Prime Ministe ...

as its departmental email system.

References

Office suites Data General Email systems {{business-software-stub