April 13, 2008 – SMS, a leading IT services provider and systems integration firm with nearly 40 years of experience providing IT solutions to the Federal Government, “What’s unnerving is the velocity at which the future sometimes arrives. Consider the Internet. This powerful but highly disruptive technology crept out of the lab (a Pentagon think tank, actually) and all but devoured modern civilization — with almost no advance warning. The first use of the word “internet” to refer to a computer network seems to have appeared in [The Washington Post] on Sept. 26, 1988, in the Financial section, on page F30 — about as deep into the paper as you can go without hitting the bedrock of the classified ads.”

The author of “The Future Is Now,” Joel Achenbach, refers to what seems to be the first mention of a computer network “Internet” appearing in The Post long before the Internet became part of our daily lives; in fact, long before it was even on the radar for most of us. In what context did this reference first appear back in 1988? The first phrasing comes from an SMS press release on September 26, 1988 which references the award of a $1,005,048 contract from the Air Force to supply a defense data network internet protocol router.

At SMS we have always taken pride in being a forward-thinking company with extremely innovative and intelligent employees. We constantly put our many years of IT experience – both collectively and individually – to use on current projects as well as looking down the pipeline to see what is coming next for the IT industry.

About SMS

SMS is a Veteran Owned business dedicated to making its clients successful by delivering talented people and mission critical, innovative IT solutions. Founded in 1976, the company has expertise in enterprise IT architecture planning, design and implementation; cyber security; data center design, continuity of operations/disaster recovery planning and deployment; enterprise resource planning; warehousing and logistics; IT systems; strategic management consulting; systems engineering; unified communications; continuous monitoring and wireless solutions.

Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, SMS is ISO 9001:2008 registered and CMMI Level 3 DEV and Level 2 SVC appraised. For additional information on SMS, visit www.sms.com.

Contact

Mark Hagen,
Marketing Manager
Phone: 571.499.5576
marketing@sms.com