Hello everyone.

I have worked for American Express on the Authorizer Assistant (AA) project since its inception
in the mid-1980s. I've been told that AA is generally recognized as one of the oldest and most successful commercial
LISP-based applications - and I personally believe that the prime reason for that success is LISP.

The AA project staff has been asked to reassess AA from top to bottom, with an eye toward developing a future
direction for the application. (As you can probably guess, there will be pressure for us to consider a re-write
in some environment other than LISP.)

I'm writing to ask for help (no, strike that...what I'm really asking for is "ammunition") from the LISP
community: information
regarding where LISP is being used, and why. For example: "Corporation X uses LISP for business function Y because..."
or "we chose LISP over other options because..." or "we have confidence in the future of LISP, its vendors,
and the availability
of LISP programmers because...".

These "testimonials" will be especially powerful if they are targeted toward a "business management" audience.

I want to stress that this is in no way intended to be a fishing expedition for proprietary information. If you
feel compelled to respond at all, please be as discreet as you need to be. The goal here is to demonstrate to
our management that there is a viable segment of the marketplace that continues to see superior value in LISP.

Thanks for your consideration.

Jack Gray

American Express made the following
 annotations on 04/16/2003 10:59:16 AM
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