Capex Corporation
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | August 1969 |
| Founder | A. LeRoy Ellison, Harry N. Cantrell |
| Defunct | 1982 |
| Fate | Acquired by Computer Associates |
| Headquarters | Phoenix, Arizona , United States |
Area served | United States, Canada, international resellers |
Key people | A. LeRoy Ellison (president), Harry N. Cantrell, Russell E. Edwards, John J. Anderson |
| Products | Optimizer (COBOL compiler enhancement), AutoTab (financial planning software), PLAN IV:MVS, TLMS II, The Scheduler, Manage:DASD, EZTEST, COTUNE II |
Number of employees | 260 (1982) |
Capex Corporation was a software firm based in Phoenix, Arizona, operating in the United States from 1969 until 1982. The company concentrated on developing system utility software tailored for the IBM mainframe environment and became well-known for its Optimizer enhancement designed for the IBM COBOL compiler. In 1982, Capex was purchased by Computer Associates.
Origins
Established as a start-up in August 1969 with an initial team of eight employees and backed by venture capital, Capex was founded by engineers formerly employed at General Electric's computer division who had expertise with systems such as the GE-600 series. Key founders included A. LeRoy Ellison (1936–2017), who assumed the role of president, and Harry N. Cantrell (1924–2004). Additional early personnel brought experience from working with Univac systems.
At that time, hardware manufacturers like General Electric bundled software free of charge with their mainframe hardware. The founders recognized a business opportunity for independent software companies, particularly following IBM’s decision in 1969 to separate software sales from its mainframe hardware—an announcement made just two months after Capex’s inception. Leveraging this industry change, Capex dedicated itself exclusively to producing software for IBM mainframes to enhance its economic prospects.
Among the early leadership were executives Russell E. Edwards and John J. Anderson. The company’s headquarters were situated on 3rd Street in Midtown Phoenix near the Central Avenue Corridor. By 1971, Capex had achieved profitability.
Products
By 1976, Capex Corporation had grown to employ forty individuals, operated sales offices throughout the United States and Canada, and maintained a network of international resellers. Its product portfolio centered on IBM's OS/MVS operating system, supported by a specialized sales team focused on that platform. The company experienced rapid expansion, reaching approximately 100 staff members by 1978 and investing $2 million in constructing a new 36,000-square-foot facility in Midtown Phoenix designed to accommodate future growth.
Capex developed both system software and application software offerings.
Optimizer
Introduced in late 1970, the COBOL Optimizer earned industry acclaim as an object code optimizer applied after the code generation phase of the IBM COBOL compiler process. It primarily acted as a peephole optimizer, substituting IBM-produced code sequences with more concise or efficient equivalents without changing their intended behavior. Additional refinements included minimizing main memory load operations into registers and enhancing execution efficiency of COBOL PERFORM statements.
The Optimizer functioned seamlessly during batch compilation immediately following IBM's compiler output of object code, providing notable improvements in runtime performance. Early users such as Ford Motor Company documented reductions in execution time ranging from 10% to 15%, along with memory usage decreases between 20% and 30%.
Besides boosting performance, the Optimizer conducted static control flow analysis to detect unreachable segments of code. Its later iteration, Optimizer III, introduced features for test-time path coverage analysis along with profiling capabilities measuring execution frequencies and timing data.
The product garnered high regard within the industry and appeared repeatedly on Datapro Research Corporation’s list of leading software packages over multiple years. Subsequently, Computer Associates developed CA-OPTIMIZER II for MVS as its successor product.
AutoTab
Introduced in 1972 by Capex, AutoTab was a financial planning software designed for IBM 360/370 and the Honeywell 6000 series (a rebranded GE-600 series). It offered finance teams a more accessible and economical alternative to bespoke programming and time-sharing services. By 1975, the enhanced AutoTab-II extended matrix capabilities from 250 × 250 to as large as 1500 × 1500 in any configuration. As decision support tools, Autotab 300 and 3000 continued to be utilized into the early 1980s. AutoTab stood out as an early batch-processing spreadsheet solution aimed at sophisticated financial planning needs.
Other products
In addition to Optimizer and AutoTab, Capex developed several other software offerings:
- PLAN IV:MVS – a system management tool focused on planning and identifying bottlenecks
- TLMS II – Tape Library Management System for IBM OS/MVS; subsequently rebranded as CA-DYNAM/TLMS by Computer Associates
- The Scheduler – a batch job scheduling application for OS/MVS, distinct from Computer Associates’ later CA-SCHEDULER 7.0 launched in 1985
- Manage:DASD – software dedicated to Direct Access Storage Device maintenance on OS/MVS platforms
- EZTEST – an interactive debugging utility for CICS teleprocessing on IBM mainframes, introduced shortly after Computer Associates acquired Capex
- COTUNE II – a COBOL code optimizer that evaluated line-by-line execution frequency to detect unused code and enhance performance
Fate
By 1982, Capex Corporation had expanded to a workforce of 260 employees while remaining privately owned. In June of that year, it was announced that Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA), based in Long Island, would acquire Capex. The transaction involved CA issuing shares valued at $22.5 million in exchange for all outstanding Capex stock, with the acquisition finalized in August 1982.
Although CA was only marginally larger than Capex at the time, this acquisition—often referred to as a merger—increased CA’s revenue by 50%. Following the integration process, approximately 30 employees from Capex were laid off. Capex continued as a division within CA operating out of its Phoenix office until about 1984, when remaining personnel moved to a new facility near Interstate 10 and 24th Street in Arizona, fully absorbing the Capex identity.
The deal was broadly seen as successful and marked the start of an assertive acquisition campaign by Computer Associates. Under CEO Charles B. Wang’s leadership, this approach helped transform CA into one of the largest software enterprises globally.
Post-acquisition, Capex’s founder Ellison emerged as a leading figure within Arizona’s entrepreneurial scene.