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Georg Heeg founded his Smalltalk company in 1987, when he was 33 years old. The company took care of Smalltalk customers in Central Europe and offered licenses, training, consulting, and project development. 

After Cincom Systems, Inc. acquired the Smalltalk business from ObjectShare in 1999, Georg Heeg eK aligned his business to partner with Cincom’s successful Smalltalk business. Heeg and Cincom agreed to a multi-year agreement focusing on Smalltalk Support, Engineering, and Consulting Services to provide Smalltalk services to Cincom and Cincom Smalltalk customers and application partners. 

Georg Heeg has been involved with this network technology since the beginning of the Internet age. He was a member of staff at Dortmund University when the Internet came to Germany in the 1980s. A whole series of software technologies have emerged from this ongoing debate, the latest of which is SmalltyWeb, a highly flexible CMS system.

In June 2011, the subsidiary Georg Heeg AG purchased the ERP system Component Studio  and began actively modernizing the ERP solution.  Heeg entered a Value-Added-Reseller (VAR) relationship with Cincom in order to further develop and modernize Component Studio using Cincom Smalltalk. Through the VAR relationship, Heeg developed the Smallty platform and in 2023, Component Studio was renamed SmalltyERP and is maintained and further developed using current Cincom Smalltalk.

The Smallty Platform is the basis for Heeg’s Smalltalk as a Service business with: 

• SmalltyWeb – highly flexible Web Content Management System for small, medium, large and for highly complex web sites.
• SmalltyERP – highly fixable ERP system for SME, adaptable to each specific business
• SmalltyPDF and SmalltyPDF lite – programmatic creation of PDF files from VisualWorks
• SmalltyPy – the bridge between Smalltalk and Python
• SmalltyAIConnect – the bridge between Smalltalk and OpenAI

With the success of the Smalltalk as a Service business, in late 2023 Heeg initiated discussions with Cincom Systems to transition the 25-year multi-faceted relationship to focus on his new application and services business. Through the first quarter of 2024, Cincom and Georg Heeg eK agreed to discontinue the existing agreement and several Heeg developers, consultants, and support staff joined Cincom’s Smalltalk team.

Georg Heeg will continue to develop the Smallty platform with the applications based on this platform and offer training and high-level consulting and to host web sites.

Suzanne Fortman, Smalltalk Operations Director at Cincom, said: "Having worked closely with the Heeg team for more than 20 years, integrating several members of the development and support staff to Cincom and our Cincom Smalltalk team is a natural fit. The collaboration with the core staff will be even closer and it will benefit the further development of Cincom Smalltalk. Cincom and the Cincom Smalltalk team are delighted to have gained such highly qualified and enthusiastic new colleagues."

Georg Heeg, owner of Georg Heeg eK and main shareholder of Georg Heeg AG said: "I founded my company more than 36 years ago to spread Smalltalk in Central Europe. Smalltalk is still the best technology to develop software because Smalltalk software is much easier to understand than other technologies. This step strengthens basic technology. My company will continue to develop our own products and offer services on the market. Our new partnership with Cincom is as Value Added Reseller to build our applications using Cincom Smalltalk and to partner with Cincom to market our products. Georg and Cincom will also enter into a new consulting services agreement to provide consulting services and training as needed for Cincom’s Smalltalk customers and partners. As a Cincom Smalltalk customer, we will also benefit from the newly expanded development team at Cincom."

Today we would like to inform you about innovations from the Smalltalk software house Georg Heeg. Since our last newsletter, Cincom® ObjectStudio® and Cincom® VisualWorks® have been released in version 9.3, whose range of functions has grown by further interesting features. The most obvious enhancement is TabbedWindows, which adds tabs to the window system in a way familiar from web browsers. A window can contain browsers (System, MethodList etc.), workspaces or inspectors in the various tabs, which significantly reduces the number of windows on the desktop.

Due to current events, we have also been dealing with the topic of artificial intelligence over the past few months. We wanted to find out whether and how ChatGPT can be meaningfully integrated into the Smalltalk environment. In doing so, we asked ourselves questions like:

• Can workflows in Smalltalk development be simplified with the help of artificial intelligence and can suggestions be created at the push of a button?
• Can AI be meaningfully integrated into customer applications?
• If a query to AI contains an application context, can AI provide actionable answers that make work easier?
• What are the possible uses of translations, summaries or analyses provided by AI?

SmalltyAIC shows once again that Cincom® ObjectStudio® and Cincom® VisualWorks® have lost none of their innovative power, even though Smalltalk is already an exhibit at the Computer History Museum. Both are still ideally suited for creating new innovative applications.

We offer our consulting services both remotely and on-site. We bring all our experience and all our tools to the table. We will be happy to advise you on how your application can also be brought to the very latest state of the art through the use of artificial intelligence. Please contact me personally to plan the next steps into the future.

Georg Heeg

PS: SmalltyAIC also has a meaning: Smallty (component written in Smalltalk) AI (artificial intelligence) C (connector or interface).

PPS: This newsletter was created and sent using a new extension of SmalltyWeb. You and your firm can also take advantage of the same simple application to generate additional interest, support and added value for your clients!

As you surely know, Cincom® ObjectStudio® and Cincom® VisualWorks® are currently already available in version 9.2.1.

As a long-standing Smalltalk software house, we not only keep the components we have developed up to date, but also create new products and license-free components.

A generational shift is currently taking place among many Smalltalk users. Where young computer scientists are trained in Smalltalk, our trainers still observe the same enthusiasm for Smalltalk that we have already known for several decades. We also like to support Smalltalk customers with tricky tasks. Recently, this has often included migrating applications from old versions of Smalltalk to current platforms. 

Please have a look at our website https://www.heeg.de/en, or contact me (georg@heeg.de). 

Georg Heeg