About ideacode

Testimonials ideacode allowed my agency to meet its customer satisfaction goals by delivering timely and accurate results.  These results enabled regions nationwide to develop better ways of conducting business while securing future space transactions. — Denise Seefeldt, US General Services Administration ideacode accurately identified all our needs and helped us to successfully track the information in the format that was required... the net result was a successful product that met our needs and was instrumental in helping the University. — Brent Lemons, NCSU Contracts & Grants More testimonials...

When there's "got to be a smarter way", ideacode is there to deliver it.  We develop software that streamlines your work flow, so that you have freedom to focus on pressing issues.  Because we start from a foundation of solid, interchangeable components, we can deliver proven solutions quickly and affordably.

Our story

Way back in 1993 at the NC School of Science and Mathematics, ideacode founder Bishop Bettini was introduced to Linux.  Because Linux was open source and freely available, he downloaded the software, surveyed its inner workings, and discovered a rich system of complexity unlike anything he had seen before.

I'd been programming since I was seven -- started out on an Apple II clone writing BASIC games -- but Linux 0.9 blew me away.  By today's standard that version was a toy, but I had never seen real code before.  That code deeply impressed me.  I knew then that I wanted to write code like that.^†

Now directed toward a career in software, Bishop worked full time as software engineer while completing his degree at NC State University.

I thought I knew hard work... until I worked full-time and schooled full-time.  I hardly slept for four years!  But I knew that programming was what I wanted to do and being paid to do what I loved was really a bonus.

The first years

In June 2000, Bishop Bettini founded ideacode with a three-fold purpose:

1. To identify challenging automation problems,
2. To imagine creative solutions to those problems, and
3. To craft software that both blew users away and was cleanly built.

Fate would bring college acquaintences together when, in 2002, he asked John Acree to join him as an owner-principal:

We had just finished up developing Red Hat's RHCE training for DigitalThink, and I wanted to complement that offering with live lab environments in an e-learning setting.  I asked around for some programmers who spoke Java, and John's name came up.  John and I had several classes together.  We'd seen each other in campus computer labs -- at all hours!  We had no idea that a few years later we'd be working together.

The collegiate angle

In 2003, NC State University Facilities Department asked ideacode to develop a facilities management application that would both replace their old mainframe system and give new features like online document storage.  The result was AERES:

We built AERES version 1 from the ground up in seventeen weeks and rolled out with no problems.  The next year, NC State described some more features they needed, and we added them.  Then again the next year, we did the same.  Since 2003, we've been working with NC State to make AERES a facilities management app with tremendous scope.  Pretty much all of the NCSU facilities data either flows from AERES, or into AERES.  It's a critical element in their operations, and I'm proud ideacode's been a part of that.

While ideacode continued to improve AERES, another collegiate opportunity appeared.  In 2007, Guilford Technical Community College asked ideacode to automate their college-wide curriculum assessment.  GTCC wanted to survey all their students and provide detailed reports for faculty and staff.  The result was Cheetah CAT:

Surveying 30,000 plus students across four campuses, in hundreds of subject areas, at all hours of the day posed an interesting challenge.  The app had to be fast, intuitive, and reliable.  While working on Cheetah CAT, we realized that we'd been tackling college-sized problems since AERES.  I guess it was an epiphany: "hey, we're doing some pretty cool stuff for colleges -- let's focus on their unique problems."

Ten years in the making

In 2010, ideacode reached a major milestone as it celebrated its ten year anniversary:

Wow, ten years!  We've helped so many folks — and solved so many interesting problems — in that time that the time's just flown by!  I'm fortunate and thankful to have a smart, dedicated team that's made it possible.  I'm looking forward to the next ten years with them.

Looking ahead

As ideacode looks to the future, its focus turns to the unique needs of colleges and universities:

In the next ten years, I see ideacode becoming an integral part of college and university operations nation wide.  I envision a world where universities have awesome, remarkable software powered by ideacode.  But because of the budget situation I know doing that will require creative thinking and smart approaches to software craftsmanship.  Fortunately though, that's something we've done well all along.

^† Quotations excerpted from interview with ideacode CEO Bishop Bettini in May, 2011.