History
Heinz Bons and Rudolf van Megen started the business in 1982, and are both members of the Management Board. The idea behind the Company originated after Heinz Bons and Rudolf van Megen started investigating methods for the improvement of software quality whilst still at university. In 1977, the research gained the financial backing of both the German Federal Ministry of Research and Technology as well as Siemens AG.
Their investigations initially focused on the high level of defects in software products, in comparison with non software products. They concluded that the high number of failures of software which had mostly not been detected was, in principle and among other reasons, due to a failure to adopt a systematic approach to software testing. Initial research lead to the development of the first process for systematic software testing in cooperation with several clients in the German IT software industry. After their initial five years researching software testing, Heinz Bons, Rudolf van Megen, Carl van Megen and Josef Peters founded the company in March 1982.
| 1982 | Heinz Bons and Rudolf
van Megen establish the SQS Gesellschaft für Software-Qualitätssicherung
mbH in Cologne. |
| 1983 | Public authorities are frontline SQS
customers. |
| 1988 | Trading companies
harness SQS expertise. |
| 1989 | SQS grows dramatically with banks and
insurance companies. |
| 1990 | The tool SQS TEST®
is launched. |
| 1991 | The young industry telecommunications
takes off and improves its software processes with the
aid of SQS. |
| 1997 | Holding an interest in DTK strengthens
services for the industry in the area of Embedded Systems. |
| 1998 | First foreign company with the Spanish
SQS S.A. |
| 2000 | SQS renames itself
Software Quality Systems AG. The national Austrian company
is established. |
| 2001 | SQS reinforces its European market
lead through majority holdings in what is now SQS Niederlande,
the British SIM Group and by establishing a national Portuguese
company. |
| 2002 | Expansion of the
business in Switzerland by establishing SQS Software Quality
Systems (Switzerland) as well as the national Portuguese
company as SQS Portugal Lda. |
| 2004 | SQS becomes CMMI Transition Partner to the SEI, and the Spanish holding is converted into a partnership with SQS S.A.. |
| 2005 | SQS becomes the first German technology company to list on London's Aim (Alternative
Investment Market). In addition to that, SQS gets a second listing at the new Entry Standard market at the Deutsche Borse stock exchange in Frankfurt. |
| 2006 | SQS acquires 100% of the shares of Cresta Group Limited, this creates the largest independent pureplay software testing and quality management consulting practice in the UK. |
