Cleverpath AION Business Rules Expert (formerly Platinum AIONDS, and before that Trinsic AIONDS, and originally Aion) is an expert system

Expert system

In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, like an expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as is the case in...

 and Business rules engine

Business rules engine

A business rules engine is a software system that executes one or more business rules in a runtime production environment. The rules might come from legal regulation , company policy , or other sources...

 owned by Computer Associates by 2005.

The product was created around 1986 as "Aion" by the Aion company. In its initial release Aion was multi-platform and continues to be deliverable to the PC

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

, Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

s, and Mainframe computer

Mainframe computer

Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...

's. In addition it ties in seamlessly with a variety of databases includingOracle

Oracle database

The Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....

, Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database server, developed by Microsoft: It is a software product whose primary function is to store and retrieve data as requested by other software applications, be it those on the same computer or those running on another computer across a network...

, and ODBC. Aion was founded by Scott Grinis and Harry Reinstein (and others).

from his bio

Scott founded Aion, a company that developed expert systems and whose advanced inference engine and object technology were used by financial services and insurance firms to develop risk-scoring and underwriting applications.

Harry Reinstein was quoted as saying:

“Our biggest competitor was not AICorp, it was COBOL”

Trinzic owned AION by 1993. A reference in a 1993 announcement indicates that Trinzic's formation was the result of a merger (paraphased):

Trinzic set three development initiatives shortly after its formation from the merger of Aion Corp. and AICorp. The other initiatives -- adding SQL extensions to Aion/DS and evaluating the unbundling of some of that product's object-oriented programming capabilities -- are still active.

Writing in 1993 Judith Hodges and Deborah Melewski give the date for the merger:

Two rival artificial intelligence software vendors -- AICorp, Inc. and Aion Corp. -- merged in September 1992 to form Trinzic Corp. As part of the merger, redundant jobs were eliminated (20% of the combined work force), leaving a total work force of 245 employees worldwide. The new firm also boasted a combined installed base of more than 1,200 sites representing more than 10,000 software licenses.

In August 1, 1994 Trinzic released version 6.4 of AIONDS saying, in part:

Trinzic Corp., Palo Alto, Calif., has unveiled The Aion Development System (AionDS) Version 6.4, an upgrade to the company's development environment for building business process automation applications. Version 6.4 provides a visual development environment for Microsoft Windows or OS/2 PM applications using business rules.

Trinzic was acquired by PLATINUM technology in 1995
which retained at least some of Trinzic's acquisitions

CA changed the system's name to CA Aion Business Rules Expert" on or before 2009. It is currently (June 2011) at Release 11 (product sheet (PDF)) on a wide range of supported platforms.

Aion has been used in a variety of industries including Energy, Insurance, Military, Aviation, and Banking. At one point an Aion expert system application written by Covia, LLC to do airport gate assignment existed.

Colossus, a computer program

Computer program

A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...

, developed by Computer Sciences Corporation

Computer Sciences Corporation

Computer Sciences Corporation is an American information technology and business services company headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, USA...

is the insurance industry’s leading expert system for assisting adjusters in the evaluation of bodily injury claims (aka "pain and suffering"). Colossus helps adjusters reduce variance in payouts on similar bodily injury claims through objective use of industry standard rules.

Kirk Wilson and Michael Parish are award winning Aion developers who have done much to advance the use of the tool within various industries.