Mosaic Software turns ten

Mosaic Software started life 1 April 1994 with the merger of two companies founded by Johann Dreyer and Willem van Biljon, a merger that formed Mosaic Software with Johann and Willem as co-owners. Today, Johann is CEO of the company (based in Deerfield Beach, Florida) and Willem is Director of New Business Development and head of the Africa division (based in Cape Town). The new company had a relatively small South African customer base. ABSA, one of South Africas leading banks and Pickn Pay, a large retailer in that country, counted amongst those first clients. Ten staff members started working for the new company. Expanding globally At the end of 1995, a US presence was established with an office in South Florida. This initial presence has grown to more than 40 people today located in the companys Deerfield Beach offices. The initial US expansion was followed in early 1997 by a European presence when Mosaic Software opened an office in the UK to service the European and Middle Eastern markets. Early in 2001, an office was opened in Melbourne, Australia, to serve the Asia-Pacific region. The company now also has sales offices in Johannesburg and Singapore. The staff complement has expanded from the initial 10 people to just under 200 globally today. Institutional investors Today the company is co-owned by some of the most prestigious multi-national players in the IT and cards industry. Persetel, forerunner of the large South African IT conglomerate Comparex, was Mosaic Softwares first institutional investor. Early in 2001, GE Equity invested in the company. This was followed by an investment by the Dutch group FMO in 2002. Postilion maturing The first version of Postilion, the transaction processing software application that forms the cornerstone of Mosaic Softwares business, was released in February 1995, primarily targeted at the retail acquiring market. Later in 1995, a decision was taken to move the entire platform to Windows and the SQL Server database – a bold decision for the time. This provided significant first-mover advantage, and today Mosaic Software is the world leader in the deployment of payment switches on the Windows platform. A dramatic technological advance came with the release of Postilion 4 in December 1999 when the core of the product was written in Java. Since then, the back-office application, Postilion Office, and the card management system, PostCard, amongst others, have been added to the Mosaic Software suite of products. The company recently announced its support for the DB2 and Oracle databases and for the Linux operating system, in addition to the Microsoft suite, with the release of Postilion 5 later this year. Expansion into Africa Six out of the ten largest banks on the African continent now count as Mosaic Software clients. A number of national switches in East, West and Southern Africa run on the Postilion platform. As a world leader in mobile pre-pay Mosaic Software counts some of the largest cellphone companies on the continent as its clients. Over the last year the company added 10 new clients to its list of success stories in countries as diverse as Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa and Botswana. The company hopes to enetrate even further into East and West Africa this year.