Back in 1979, after several years as a high school mathematics teacher  Phil Hessemer joined Axxess Information Systems in Mountainside New Jersey a Prime Information dealer and software development company. Phil became involved with the Pick O/S and the early years of Prime Information, a derivation of Pick running under Primos on the Prime minicomputer platform. Work at Axxess involved Pick to Prime software conversions, and designing and developing software applications for the Apparel industry and then Colleges with a College Administration software product called AIMS. 

In 1983, Phil started The Watchung Software Group, a partnership providing software services, support, and training to users of AIMS within the college market. It was here that he also got his first exposure to Revelation and Cosmos and developed a single-user application using RevF.

In 1985, he joined Cogent Information Systems a Prime Information development company where as the manager of the training department he focused on developing a Revelation and Prime Information training program. Focus soon shifted entirely to the Revelation product line where he was instrumental in Cogent becoming a charter Revelation Authorized Training Center, a beta site for AREV 1.0, and assisted with the planning of the first Revelation conference in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1988. Phil established a close relation with Cosmos and eventually Revelation Technologies, wrote articles for Revelations magazine and Cogent’s Cognition newsletter, and participated in the Revelation Developer Roundtables hosted by Revelation Technologies.  Phil started up the Revelation Development Group within Cogent and was responsible promoting Revelation and then Advanced Revelation to companies nationwide. He was eventually promoted to Vice President of Technical Services overseeing the entire company’s development and training departments.

Phoenix Solutions was born in 1989 and as President, Phil Hessemer made a commitment to the Revelation community, quickly became a Revelation Authorized Training Center, an Alliance Partner, a Ceridian Business partner, and established Phoenix Solutions as a provider of services to Revelation and Advanced Revelation users nationwide and in Canada. In addition to training and custom development, Phoenix converted applications from Pick to AREV and RevG to AREV.

Phil Hessemer participated in the Revelation Technologies Developer Roundtables, was a speaker and vendor at the Revelation Conferences, and an instructor for RTI for their AREV classes and Human Resource Product line.

Phoenix Solutions became involved with OpenInsight 2.0 and was one of the first companies to participate in Revelation’s OpenInsight Porting lab. Phoenix worked with Ceridian Employer Services as a training partner and Phil taught classes in AREV and then OpenInsight to Ceridian offices nationwide as well as at their National Sales Conference. Phoenix Solutions migrated several clients' AREV applications to OpenInsight.

In 1997 after having supported an AREV based product called Sportspak – A Game Scheduling and Official Assigning Management System for several years, Phoenix Solutions acquired the product and formed a subsidiary company called MVP Software. Its mission was to manage and support the Sportspak product and eventually convert it from Advanced Revelation to Windows.  This was at a time when the company felt that OpenInsight lacked the stability and robustness required of the Sportspak product, the web enabling of information required of the schools, and other requirements not available in the early releases of OpenInsight. So Sportspak was converted to Windows using Visual Basic and SQL. Sportspak is currently used by large school systems nationwide for scheduling athletic games, assigning officials, and facilities management.

Today Phil states “If we had the capabilities of the current version of OpenInsight available to us back then, it would have been a no-brainer and a much easier transition for both our developers and the users. We would have been able to convert Sportspak in half the time and cost. We are in the planning stages at this time to move Sportspak to OpenInsight. Since we are planning a major revision I feel the move will ultimately be cost effective for us and for future sales.”

Phoenix Solutions is a Solutions Partner with Revelation Software and continues to provide development of Windows based applications using OpenInsight and provides conversion services of legacy apps to Windows and the web using OpenInsight. In addition, the company continues to support applications in RevG, AREV, and OpenInsight.