Railroad Becomes Software Company

We’ve all heard the old saying ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ and the Union Pacific Railroad has proved it correct once again. When your company needs complex task-specific software to operate, the best solution is to create it yourself. In the process of developing its own software, Union Pacific is also developing into a unique software company.

In the process, the Union Pacific Railroad "generates $35 million to $40 million in revenue a year selling or licensing some of those technology innovations to other companies.

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It's not surprising.

Many people don't know that Kaiser Permante (a huge health care services and provider on the west coast) started out as a construction company.

Sprint came from southren Pacific railroad , not unusual for a companies needs to be met internally.

Synopsis says it all, that's the definition of innovation, you need something, it doesn't exist, you make it.

quimby999 said:

Sprint came from southren Pacific railroad , not unusual for a companies needs to be met internally.

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Came here to say this (Sprint = Southern Pacific Railroad Intercontinental Network of Telecommunications). I suspect that it grew more out of the fact that they had a full network of interstate right-of-way than any internal requirements. EDS used to be GM's IT department, and had an interesting journey.

Once worked for a company whose initials stood for "[medical] diagnostic retrieval systems". We built RADAR systems for the Navy, and other military contractor jobs. Other divisions tended toward the military side as well. I don't think they produced a single piece of medical equipment in 20 years.

sfsuphysics said:

Synopsis says it all, that's the definition of innovation, you need something, it doesn't exist, you make it.

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Hell yes, this is true innovation AND they will make money from it by licencing to other companies......i love it!

Normal progression of software.

We did the same type of thing at Homeside Lending, a mortgage company I used to work for, about 12 years ago. The software and development team branched out and became a giant mortgage servicing software company that services a majority of home loans in the US and abroad.

Morons these days think that outsourcing (in general - not necessarily to China or India) is the answer to everything, so good luck convincing people of how wrong that often is.

bouygues in France was a construction company who had so many cell phone... they bought a cell phone company

They better be careful, Apple owns patents for some of that innovation. >.>