History

combit GmbH was founded in 1988. This took place in the basement of the "Technologiezentrum Konstanz", a technology center to encourage newly founded businesses. To start in a basement seems to be typical for the IT business. Date of commercial register entry: 01.02.1989.

In the beginning, combit was principally involved in programming PC controls for biotechnological reactors as well as network concepts and consulting. At the end of 1996 combit finally has outgrown the technology centre and moved into new rooms across the Main station of Konstanz, including an impressive view over the lake of Constance. Four years later even those rooms were too small. That's why combit is located at the Untere Laube since the beginning of 2001. The terrific view has been swapped for more space to think and a good premise for further expansion in the future. 

To choose a downtown location instead of a cheaper suburban or industrial lot mirrors our values: it's important that the development and the marketing of high quality and flexible software products is also fun, and therefore the right environment is a basic condition for a dedicated and qualified team. Enjoying your work means doing a good job. For this it's helpful to be fully integrated in urban life with all its advantages, compared to being encapsulated in a purely industrial working area. For the advantages that come with working downtown, combit employees exchange parking lots for public transport or bicycles.

The first software products were address manager and DataBridge for DOS. DataBridge's philosophy even then was that data should only be entered into a database once and could then be transferred to other DOS programs, e.g. for formatted cover letters. In 1992 the Windows market was developed with address manager for Windows and DataBridge for Windows. DataBridge was used to integrate address manager into the Windows world. Meanwhile DataBridge and address manager have merged completely. DataBridge isn't available separately anymore.

As there was no database engine on the market that met our requirements of speed and performance, we developped DLL Base - later the database of address manager und factura manager. With DLL Base the first combit development tool entered the market in 1992. Later in this year it was followed by report generator List & Label and the screen list tool browse in 1993. Both products have been integrated in address manager and other products.

Due to several requests of address manager customers we released the billing procession software factura manager in 1995, a solution to create invoices, offers, inlcuding stock management which works hand in hand with address manager.

The text module and automation tool SmartKey concentrates on saving its users' precious time by helping to avoid redundant typing. It was released for the first time in 1997.

Our newest product is a larger version of address manager: combit Relationship Manager (cRM) was released in May 2004. While working on this new product, it was very important for us to fully implement our 15 years experience concerning CRM and contact management we acquired with address manager. That's the reason why these two products are very similar in many areas, except the database: the cRM is based on a relational client server database, MS SQL Server. Both products have the same flexibility that is associated with all combit software.

Over the last years, List & Label has increasingly captured the American and world market. List & Label 13 was released in November 2007, combit Relationship Manager 2007 in June 2007, address manager 13 in July 2006, SmartKey 3 in August 2003 and factura manager 6 in February 2006.

We formed important alliances. Together we're strong - whether with technical partners such as tobit, or solution partners like Unirent or EffCom. During the past few years, combit address manager has further strengthened its position in the German speaking countries and therefore smoothed the way for combit Relationship Manager.