miro's work

I have done many strange things in my life to earn some money. I was driving a farm vehicle during harvest. I was employed as an assistant cook in a restaurant. But most of my income came directly or indirectly from computers. Computers were my only source of income since I left college with my MSc in Computer Science.

I have started my first job as a programmer in CEKAR in January 1992. At that time they struggled with legacy systems (there are always legacy systems, aren't they?) and I was helping them move towards PCs and C language. I left CEKAR and started my own company (Callisto Software Design) in February 1993. My only employee at that time was my girlfriend (and now wife) Ada.

In February 1994 I started my university adventure as a research assistant in Institute of Computer Science, University of Mining and Metallurgy. I was modeling world wide web load balancing techniques using autonomous agents.

Meanwhile, in Callisto several projects have been completed. All of them were using C++ as their base language. We introduced object oriented principles in our systems as early as 1995. System PORTO, the most complex system ever written in Callisto, was a complete software solution for a small to intermediate company. It managed inventory, calculated taxes, printed reports and even helped the accountant prepare corporate tax returns.

January 1997 marks another milestone in Callisto growth. We were connected to the Internet! We register the domain http://www.callisto.pl/ and begin to offer Internet solutions to local companies. We chose the consulting company model for day to day operations - we did not act as "wholesale" Internet provider, but rather designed, implemented and deployed complete, Internet oriented solutions. Several turnkey Internet based software solutions were implemented, like user registration system for a company that distributed their products via our website.

In 1998 Callisto was growing happily, my PhD was on track, when it all derailed suddenly :-) We decided to move to the USA. In March 1998 we (myself and Ada) joined Melita International, leading provider of call center solutions as software engineers. Since then Ada became an expert in telephony, and I worked in Melita's Internet division. In September 1999 Melita changed its name to eshare communications. All went well, so we thought, until July 2001, when it was announced that eshare is being acquired by a large corporation called divine, inc. At that time many of us thought it was a bad move to join a huge corporation when our small company was just short of being profitable. The worries proved true in February 2003 when divine filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11. Our division was sold on an auction that took place in April 2003. We made a full circle and are back to the old name again: we are Melita International (hooray!). Nobody here really liked that eshare or divine name. What a strange idea to start a company name from a lowercase letter.


Melita corporate headquarters in Norcross, Georgia, USA.