VisionLink was founded by Dr. W. Douglas Zimmerman and Kyle Kuczun in 1991, was incorporated in 1996, and has since become the leading provider of community resource and client management software systems. VisionLink began development of what would become its Community Operating System in 1996.
PathFinder, the software suite that supports connections between classrooms and communities was launched in 1997. In 1998, NextStep was launched to support connections between employers, job seekers, training providers, and workforce development agencies. And then one year later in 1999, Tapestry was launched to better integrate social service systems.
As VisionLink customers deployed PathFinder, NextStep and Tapestry, requests were made to integrate their functions so that a single community, region, or state could support social service, education, and workforce operations through a common system. VisionLink realized this objective in 2002, by re-building the code base of three product lines into a single coherent system.
In 2004, VisionLink radically overhauled its core offerings, by replacing its data system, web server, and operating environment with the leading web server application (Apache), the leading open source SQL database application (PostgreSQL), and moving to the leading open source operating environment (Linux).
In 2006, VisionLink's technologies were selected to respond to the large need created by Hurricane Katrina. VisionLink deployed multi-state, multi-agency client management systems and shelter management systems used in more than 40 states. The months following Katrina tested the firm's capacities as never before. We are proud to have earned the reputation as the "one technology that did not fail."
VisionLink has just released a major upgrade, completing its work adding homeless management support (HMIS) to its core feature set through a streamlined and comprehensive client intake, referral, and management system. This means that VisionLink now offers two client intake, referral and case management systems to meet a wide range of needs. And both systems? Yes, they can be used separately or collaboratively in one Tapestry system.
Creating a single code base for Tapestry, PathFinder and NextStep has resulted in tremendous efficiencies for the firm. It means that the developers have a single instance and a single version of the code base to support and modify. It means that our help desk operation need support only one product, one version-it is simply deployed as different modules to different clients, with integrated tools and switches for client and end-user customizations. It also means that we can allocate resources to very high end server technology, as we do not need to distribute our resources across separate sub-systems, versions, or products.
As we move into 2007 we are releasing a wide range of upgrades, expanding our server environment even further, and combining our education and workforce features into the Tapestry brand, to directly indicate the breadth of modules that can be woven together for successful communities. Our customers benefit from a tremendous array of modules which can be deployed to support the particular social service, education, and workforce needs of their community, region, or state, for day-to-day, or for disaster relief purposes.
