NetSys  NetSys International (Pty) Ltd. is a South African–based company, specialising in solutions for the weather and aviation industries. The company was registered in 1981 as a private company (Company registration no: 1981/02825/07). NetSys was founded for the purpose of developing network communications equipment and automatic message switching systems. The first customer was the South African Defence Force which ordered a logistics network comprising some 50 nodes of proprietary networking devices. The experience gained during this deployment was instrumental in entering into the international market. In 1988, NetSys was awarded a contract by the American computer company, Control Data Corporation, to develop a meteorological message-switching system on the back of the NetSys network devices. This development and subsequent investment in aviation related product development enabled NetSys to become a major solutions supplier in the Meteorological and Aviation industries. Since the work done for Control Data Corporation, NetSys has won a selection of tenders from a number of prestigious organisations. The main product was Weatherman, a message switch tailored for effective management of weather reports. In 1996 NetSys entered into the new area of Aviation with the commissioning of an automated Met and AIS pilot briefing system in Sweden, under the system name of Met/AIS. Isak Lombard, an executive director of NetSys, also joined NetSys in 1996 to become part of the Met/AIS team. The Met/AIS system became FlightMan that was subsequently acquired by aviation authorities in many other countries. NetSys International, in a strategic move to ensure that it remained a leader in its chosen fields, sought ISO Accreditation during 1998, achieving this goal on 29 March 1999 when NetSys received its ISO 9001 Accreditation Certificate from DEKRA – ITS Certification Services (Pty) Ltd. In another strategic move, NetSys decided in 2001 to supply commercial off the shelf (COTS) hardware for its system solutions – Cisco Systems for synchronous connections and Wide Area Network interfaces, 3Com for Local Area Network connections, Digi for asynchronous ports, Hewlett-Packard and Dell for server hardware are given preference when proposing new deals. In 2003, NetSys decided to consolidate its applications under one umbrella user-interface to provide a consistent look-and-feel for a diverse set of applications and different types of users. The solution was based on a client-server architecture where much of the existing proven server software (NSSRV) are re-used but exposed in modern client software (NSWS). This new solution is called the NetSys Solutions approach, where necessary elements from the server and client software are chosen and utilised to create a best-fit solution for the customer's needs.