lse rm . industry computer hardware computer software it services founded 1973 founder mike fischer and mike o regan headquarters milton park uk area served worldwide key people john poulter chairman ; david brooks chief executive officer ; iain mcintosh chief financial officer products desktops servers notebooks netbooks educational software virtual learning environment revenue 178 million 2015 number of employees approx . 1 600 2015 subsidiaries rm education rm results rm resources website http www.rm.com rm education is the principal division of the rm group a british company that specialises in providing information technology products and services to educational organisations and establishments . its key market is uk education including schools colleges universities government education departments and educational agencies . rm employs around 1 600 people the majority based in the company s headquarters located on milton park near didcot oxfordshire . rm also has offices across the uk and a software development facility in india . 1 contents 1 history 2 business structures 2.1 rm education 2.2 rm resouces 2.3 rm results 3 international operations 3.1 india 3.2 germany 3.3 usa 3.4 asia pacific 3.5 middle east north africa and south asia menasa 4 rm computers 5 software 6 staff 7 references 8 external links history edit the company was founded in 1973 as research machines in oxford england by mike fischer and mike o regan respectively graduates of oxford and cambridge universities . initially it traded under the name sintel as a mail order supplier of electronic components mainly dealing with the hobbyist market . with the arrival of microcomputer chips in the mid 1970s the company expanded into the design and manufacturing of microcomputers . the company shipped its first computer in 1977 2 to a customer in a local education authority and has been involved with educational computing ever since . in the 1980s rm and its rival acorn computers sold thousands of computers to schools in the uk as part of the government s microelectronics education programme . a key model of the time was rm s z80 based rml 380z . the company was invited to tender to supply the bbc micro 3 but declined on grounds that it was not economically feasible to provide so many features at such a low price and to such a tight schedule . 4 5 6 the company floated on the london stock exchange in november 1994 under the name rm plc. mike fischer was chief executive of the group until 1997 . he was succeeded by richard girling 1997 2002 tim pearson 2002 08 terry sweeney 2008 7 11 rob sirs 2011 8 12 9 martyn ratcliffe 2011 13 10 and john poulter since 2013 11 . in 2003 the company won the contract to deliver online tests for key stage 3 ict . despite a pilot phase in 2005 involving 45 500 pupils that was judged a success by the qualifications and curriculum authority 12 the government cancelled the contract in 2007 shortly before their scheduled introduction . 13 cuts in the budgets of uk educational establishments in 2011 damaged rm s revenues leading it to shed hundreds of employees and sell less profitable parts of its business . 14 15 in october 2013 rm announced that it would cease production of computers which would entail 300 redundancies . 16 business structures edit rm classifies its business into three areas rm education edit the division that deals with technology infrastructure software and services including learning platforms interactive classroom equipment connectivity networking software school management software and support services . rm resouces edit this division focuses on products for use in the learning curriculum primarily from tts a company acquired in 2004 . 17 rm previously offered products from other classroom resources firms it had acquired spacekraft ltd developer and manufacturer of a range of sensory products . acquired in 2007 sold back to original owners in 2016 . 18 19 dacta ltd distributor of educational products from lego tolo and brio . acquired in 2007 20 and sold in 2012 . 21 isis concepts ltd a uk furniture manufacturer . acquired in 2009 and sold in 2012 . 22 rm results edit deals with the process management and outsourcing for testing and qualifications ; data analysis services for teachers education managers and policy makers . clients include cambridge assessment and the international baccalaureate . 23 international operations edit from the mid 1990s the company expanded overseas with international revenues rising to 12 % of the total group s revenue in 2009 . 24 a contraction in customer spending in rm s core uk education market and slow growth in the overseas businesses prompted it to divest several of them from 2010 . india edit rm founded its subsidiary rm education solutions india in thiruvananthapuram in 2003 to develop software and provide central corporate functions . in 2015 it accounted for approximately 33 % of the rm workforce . germany edit in 1993 the company established a subsidiary in soest germany in order to sell a localized version of rm net lm a turnkey local area network product for schools consisting of file servers running microsoft lan manager client pcs running microsoft windows 3.1 and including a suite of rm developed network management applications . despite a nationwide program of marketing seminars and three pilot sites rm withdrew within two years . usa edit rm educational software inc. was established in 2005 to provide schools and districts in north america with many of the uk software products . it has been inactive since 2011 . in 2008 rm purchased and integrated the us interactive classroom provider computrac 25 and sold it at a loss in 2011 . 26 asia pacific edit rm asia pacific started operation in 1997 . a head office was opened in perth office in february 1999 after being awarded a contract for schools information systems by the department of education and training western australia then named edwa . the company grew to employ 50 staff located in perth melbourne sydney and wellington nz servicing over 4 000 schools across australasia and in hong kong beijing shanghai singapore and taipei . 27 rm asia pacific was sold to civica in 2011 . middle east north africa and south asia menasa edit in 2009 the company announced that it was expanding its business into the menasa region with offices based in dubai . the company stated that this would be a joint venture rm menasa will through subsidiaries licensed to trade in each country provide educational ict products and services to schools in the middle east north africa and south asia menasa . it will be the exclusive distributor of rm s learning technologies products in the menasa region . 28 this venture was closed down after 12 months . rm computers edit rm manufactured desktop and server computers in its oxfordshire premises from 1978 until 2014 . the first model rm shipped was the rml 380z based on the z80 processor and cp m operating system . 29 this was followed in 1982 by the link 480z 30 essentially a smaller diskless 380z with a simple networking capability enabling it to use the file storage of a parent 380z via cp net networking software and zilog z net network hardware . in 1985 rm released the rm nimbus pc 186 a desktop computer using the intel 80186 processor the forerunner of the 286 processor used in the ibm pc at that defined pc compatibility as a dominant standard for personal computers for decades to come . as the 80186 processor lacked its successor s protected mode rm s computer was not truly pc compatible but could run some pc software and microsoft windows up to 3.0 . rm introduced its ax model in 1986 using the intel 80286 processor . a common use for the ax was as a fileserver connected to pc 186 clients using ms net microsoft s network operating system of the time and z net hardware later optionally via ethernet . usually the pc 186 clients were diskless booting via the network . diskless client computers that loaded their operating system applications and user data centrally from fileservers were common in uk education for a further decade partially to avoid the cost of local storage devices such as hard disks but also to protect system files as the client operating systems ms dos and windows did not offer access control at the file system level until windows xp introduced support for ntfs . from the ax model onwards rm computers were pc compatible . the x series was supplemented by the vx using the new 32 bit 80386 processor marketed as a standalone cad workstation or network fileserver . rm released m series computers primarily used as diskless network clients using the 80286 and later 80386 processors . these used the micro channel architecture that featured in the ibm ps 2 which was faster than the standard isa architecture but failed to gain widespread acceptance . rm s fileserver platform became its e series computers using the similarly short lived eisa architecture and using a tower case to allow space for multiple hard disks . these fileservers ran microsoft lan manager on microsoft os 2 preconfigured with client operating system files windows 3.0 and later 3.1 for remote booting and bundled with rm developed tools for managing network users client pcs and applications . this was sold as rm net lm . the success of pc compatibility as a worldwide standard changed rm s focus from complete in house design of circuit boards peripherals and firmware to the assembly and integration of hardware components sourced predominantly from the far east . the hardware within rm server and desktop pcs was no longer significantly different from mainstream pcs from other vendors . in 1994 the company released rm connect its turnkey network solution for education and successor to rm net lm . rm connect comprised microsoft operating systems at the server windows nt and successors and client windows 3.11 windows 95 and successors in house coded tools for managing the network a predefined software configuration and applications such as microsoft office . diskless network client pcs were discontinued as the client operating system from windows 95 onwards had become too large to transfer over the lan to multiple pcs in a timely manner so local hard disks were required . from version 2.4 rm connect was renamed rm community connect . in the new millennium rm offered laptops and tablets that bore its name . these were manufactured by asus and others . 31 in 2014 rm ceased hardware manufacture to focus on software and services . software edit the company offers a range of educational software including the kaleidos virtual learning environment mathsalive discoveralive living library and successmaker . they also package software titles from other companies to allow easy centralized installation on rm networks . 32 in 2005 rm was awarded the contract for glow formally known as scottish schools digital network ssdn national intranet project . under the five year 37.5 million project all 32 local authorities over 3 000 schools and over 800 000 education users plus parents had access to glow . staff edit chief executive officer david brooks executive chairman john poulter references edit about rm education . rm education web site . retrieved 25 july 2012 . research machines company profile rm.com accessed 10 march 2009 blyth tilly . the legacy of the bbc micro . nesta . nesta . p. 12 . retrieved 2 november 2015 . smith tony . the micro you used in school the story of the research machines 380z . the register . situation publishing ltd. retrieved 2 november 2015 . hegenbarth nick . rm 380z . old computers.com . retrieved 2 november 2015 . wilcock john . staffordshire university computing futures museum computers page . staffordshire university computing futures museum . staffordshire university . retrieved 2 november