Iolo technologies
iolo technologies is a privately held American Software company headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. iolo CREATES software designed to repair, optimize, and protect Windows PCs: its flagship product, System Mechanic, is a top-selling software product in the PC tune-up utility software category, and has received several awards and accolades from reviewers and experts in the industry.
iolo was founded in 1998 by Noah T. Rowles, a self-taught software engineer, inventor, and businessman who today serves as its President and CEO. In 1999, the company released the first version of its popular System Mechanic software, which Rowles initially created and marketed himself.
Products
iolo's most broadly distributed product, System Mechanic, is a PC performance and tune-up software program designed to fix, optimize, and automatically maintain Windows computers. Other products produced by iolo are DriveScrubber, software for secure data deletion; Search and Recover, software that recovers lost and deleted data files; and System Shield, an antivirus and antispyware program. Additionally, iolo's System Mechanic Professional suite incorporates all four of iolo’s primary products, plus online data backup, into one program.
Company growth
Starting in 1998, iolo focused almost entirely on online sales and marketing, with the majority of its customers purchasing directly from the company’s website. In 2002, iolo launched its product line into the traditional software retail channel, gaining access to a worldwide marketplace and broad set of distribution opportunities. By 2003, iolo’s software was carried in more than 10,000 retail storefronts; by 2008, that number had grown to more than 18,000 globally.
In 2004, iolo’s 979% growth rate over the previous 5 years achieved a #8 ranking on Deloitte's Fast 50 list. iolo's continued growth from 2004-2007 kept the company on Deloitte's list in 2004, 2005, and 2007.
According to retail figures and data gathered by the market research firm NPD Group, by 2006 iolo’s DriveScrubber software had become the top-selling data removal product, and by 2007, System Mechanic had taken 66% of the utility software market share to become the best-selling software of its kind in the U.S., a position that it has continued to hold since.
In 2008-9, iolo's revenues continued to grow by double digits year over year. In 2009 and 2010, the American Business Awards named iolo the Fastest-Growing Company of the Year, from among public and private companies, with and without outside capital and funding, and across various industries, regions and sizes. In 2010, Noah T. Rowles was named Executive of the Year in the category of mid-sized computer software companies by the American Business Awards. In the same year, the Tech Awards Circle also honored Rowles as one of their Executives of the Year.
In both 2009 and 2010 The Los Angeles Business Journal named iolo one of the top 50 "Best Places To Work In Los Angeles", which came alongside a roughly 30% increase in staff during 2010 alone.
Today, iolo has a physical sales presence in 33 countries spanning 6 different languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch. According to NPD data, System Mechanic currently holds over 85% of the retail market share for tune-up utility products in the US, and accounts for 98% of the retail market share in its category in Canada.
iolo officially began to publish research from iolo Labs in 2009. First started in 2001, iolo Labs is an independent research arm of the company that aims to understand issues in computer performance and stability through scientific study. The resulting body of knowledge is intended to improve the effectiveness of iolo technologies' commercial products, and provide a foundation for published scientific papers that will make the Labs' latest research into computer optimization available to the public.
Certifications and patents
In 2011, iolo received a patent (US Patent No. 7873877) for the technology it invented and subsequently used within several of its products, most notably through the popular ActiveCare feature included with the System Mechanic product family. ActiveCare is a process used in System Mechanic that allows that program's repair and maintenance tools to run automatically in the background when the computer is idle and not in use.
In 2010, iolo filed for a patent on the technology incorporated within its Program Accelerator tool (included in System Mechanic version 10 and later), which works to re-align associated program files for faster and more efficient overall computer performance.
The anti-malware security technology used in iolo's System Shield product has been tested and certified by a number of respected independent labs and agencies, including ICSA Labs, West Coast Labs, and Virus Bulletin.
See also
- AntiVirus
- Comparison of antivirus software
- List of computer viruses
- System Mechanic