On this day exactly 30 years ago, December 2nd, 1992, Martin Hager founded retarus network services GmbH. In the meanwhile, the company’s name has evolved into simply retarus GmbH. CEO Martin Hager is still at the helm of his company with undiminished enthusiasm.
In its early days, as the very first Lotus premium partner, Retarus* specialized in sales, consulting, and operation of the LAN-based email system “cc:Mail”, and was one of the first service providers to offer its services including 24/7 monitoring. The “CIS:Link” software developed by Retarus used a single CompuServe user ID to provide all cc:Mail users at a company with access to CompuServe email and forums. This made Retarus the first service provider worldwide to link a LAN based email system with a public network.
Since 1993, Retarus has been sending faxes on behalf of customers, as well as running a software brokerage service (trading in software licenses). In 1994, the company developed its first email virus protection solution as a managed service. The following year, the first apprentice started his training at Retarus as an IT systems management assistant. At the time, that type of apprenticeship did not even have a syllabus at vocational colleges yet. 1996 saw Retarus entering the EDI business, offering services and products, and since 1997 the company has also been providing highly secure email encryption as a service.
At CeBIT in 1998, Retarus launched the online wake-up service “weckruf.de”. By the time it was discontinued in 2003, more than 150,000 users had registered for the service and requested over 8 million wake-up calls. In 1999, the Faxolution infrastructure was brought into operation with maximum transaction security and virtually unlimited fax capacity, and a year later it was certified for the transmission of fax messages directly out of SAP systems. Then in 2001, Retarus set up an additional data center in Munich, and in the same year the company took over management of BITKOM’s fax Robinson list.
The message transmission tool “WebExpress”, which enables faxes to be sent from a web interface, was launched in 2003, and since 2007 the service has made it possible to send messages to multi-channel distribution lists including email addresses, fax numbers, and cell phone numbers (SMS). In 2004, Retarus’ headquarters was relocated from Höhenkirchen to nearby Munich, and 2005 witnessed the launch of the “EAS” admin portal, enabling Retarus’ customers to make a lot of their own configuration settings for the services they have booked.
The years that followed were largely characterized by the company’s global expansion. In 2006, Retarus established branch offices in Switzerland, Italy, and France. Spain and Austria followed in 2008, before Retarus ventured across the pond to the USA the next year. In 2009, the company also moved into new offices – the current headquarters at 30 Aschauer Street in South Munich. Singapore was established in 2010 as a hub for APAC activities, with the UK and Australia following in 2011.
In 2017, Retarus celebrated its 25th anniversary in style with employees, customers and partners at Munich’s Park Café. The product portfolio was strengthened substantially over the course of the year with features such as Postdelivery Protection and ATP functions for Email Security, as well as a massively scalable innovation for Transactional Email.
A highlight of 2018 was the official opening of Retarus’ new Global Service and Support Center in Erfurt in the presence of Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee. The same year, the European Patent Office (EPO) also granted Retarus a patent for the company’s own “Patient Zero Detection®” innovation. In 2019 and 2021, Retarus founded subsidiaries for its new development centers in Romania and Portugal.
You can find out more about the company’s history on the Retarus website (with a brand-new homepage this week).
In the meanwhile, Retarus provides enterprise cloud solutions for messaging, email security and business integration – with the highest levels of service and performance, highly secure, compliant with data protection regulations and globally available. Retarus’ services are used with great success to cloudify and safeguard messaging and email infrastructures, as well as enabling the intelligent automation of business processes and workflows. The owner-led company has around 500 employees in twelve countries on four continents. Retarus generates roughly half of its turnover outside of Germany. More than 40 percent of the companies listed in the S&P Global 100 rely on Retarus’ services.
*By the way, the name Retarus is derived from Retiarius (Latin for “net-man”). This gladiator used his weapons, a net and a trident, in innovative ways and was characterized by a highly efficient fighting style.
