Bluestone Software spent most of its life as a Unix consulting and staffing firm in New Jersey. Then it built a product called Sapphire/Web, and everything changed. Sapphire/Web was a framework for Java application servers, the software layer that sits between a company's stored records and the people who need to reach them on the web. By the fall of 1999 more than 500 customers, from AT&T to Eli Lilly, had bought it, and Bluestone went public.

From Unix Staffing to Java

The company was incorporated in New Jersey in 1989 as Bluestone Consulting. Its early business was information technology consulting on Unix systems and placing technical staff. In the mid-1990s it turned its expertise into packaged software, and from 1996 on it sold Sapphire/Web through a direct sales force and resellers. The bet was that every big company would need to put its old databases on the web, and that a dedicated application server would handle the load better than custom code.

Into Hewlett-Packard

Bluestone sold 4 million shares at $15 on September 24, 1999, and listed on Nasdaq as BLSW. The internet boom lifted every company with web infrastructure to sell. In October 2000 Hewlett-Packard agreed to buy Bluestone in an all-stock deal, giving 0.2433 pre-split HP shares for each Bluestone share. HP wanted its XML and mobile technology for its own internet software push. The deal closed in early 2001.

Cover: Quarry on Pentelicon, Joseph Pennell. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a stone quarry (Bluestone and its Sapphire).