It’s hard to believe, but Maplesoft as a company has reached the quarter-century mark.  Twenty-five years ago this month, the founders launched this company as a vehicle to market, distribute and support a symbolic computation program they had created called Maple.  They had been getting a lot of interest in their software from other universities, and thought it could have a future as a commercial product.

They were right.

On the journey from precarious start-up to world leader, the company has experienced ups and downs, successes and otherwise.  Throughout its history, though, two things have remained an important part of life here at Maplesoft.  One is that people here are genuinely excited by what our technology can do now, and what it could become in the future.  There’s a real sense that our products make a difference in people’s lives, whether it is a high school student getting that burst of illumination when he first understands what 3*sin(x)  looks like, an engineer discovering a better way to tackle her design problem, or an educator who has more time to focus on students because he is spending less time marking.  More importantly, though, what keeps us motivated is the passion so many of our customers have for our products.   Lots of companies have interested customers, but it is a rare privilege to be part of a company whose customers feel so deeply engaged that they seek us out to give us their views (sometimes at great length!) on what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong. Please keep it up.

To commemorate this anniversary, we have launched a timeline highlighting just some of the events in the company’s history, and even some from the pre-historic period when Maple was a research project at the University of Waterloo.  Have fun exploring our past and feel free to add comments about your own favorite Maplesoft moments.  With your help, we’re looking forward to celebrating many more anniversaries together!