When an electronics maker changed a design, dozens of contract manufacturers and suppliers around the world needed to know at once. Keeping all of them on the same parts list was a constant struggle. Agile Software built tools to share that product information over the internet. When it filed to go public in the summer of 1999, outsourced manufacturing was booming, and the chains of suppliers kept getting longer.

Every Change, Everywhere

Bryan Stolle founded Agile in 1995. He bet that product information, such as bills of materials and engineering change orders, should live in one shared system every partner could reach. If a design changed, every supplier would know at once. That promised fewer errors, faster product launches and less scrap for companies that no longer built everything themselves. Electronics makers were its first big market.

Into Oracle's Lineup

Agile priced at $21 a share in August 1999 and climbed steeply during the boom. Its sales fell when the technology industry cut spending after 2000. It kept growing its product lifecycle management business across more industries. In 2007 Oracle bought Agile for about $495 million and added its software to Oracle's applications for manufacturers. Agile's products lived on inside Oracle's lineup for years.

Cover: Ono no Tofu Watching a Leaping Frog, Kitao Shigemasa. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a leaping frog (agility and persistence).