Red Wolf & Ondexx

The concept for Ondexx started with David Tessler in 1993 when he was writing apps for the insurance industry. He discovered that several solutions had common or overlapping information and content management requirements.

Through this insight, combined with his strengths as a technical architect, he knew there was a critical need in the market for a comprehensive, easy-to-use, and cost-effective information management platform that didn’t depend on legions of IT staff.

David established Red Wolf Online, choosing the name as a tribute to the endangered North American species. That year, approached Canada Life with the idea of Ondexx. Canada Life had worked with David already and knew that his thinking on information management was ahead of its time. Since many underlying components were already developed, the initial solution was implemented in three months. This made Ondexx a forerunner as one of the first SaaS/Cloud solutions in the information management space.

Manulife Canada signed on to use Ondexx for life underwriting. Manulife was dissatisfied with the products they had been using for information management and challenged Red Wolf to adapt the Ondexx solution to their organization’s needs. As a result, what Manulife saw was an opportunity for an information management solution that could stretch across their entire organization.

In partnership with Manulife and John Hancock, Red Wolf unveiled the next evolution of their product, which was initially called OnDex (now Ondexx), abbreviated from the term “online indexing.” This release of Ondexx was the first genuinely enterprise-wide information management solution aimed at the insurance vertical. This release of Ondexx was expanded to work with all departments in an insurance organization.

This partnership started with one department, and by 2009, Red Wolf was a global strategic vendor for Manulife. Today Ondexx is used by 37,000 employees and users at Manulife.

Ondexx continued to be improved and officially transitioned from an information management platform to a full knowledge management solution. This was an important transition for Ondexx, as it recognized that the solution offered more to an organization than traditional information management – managing the information resources in a company and improving performance. In contrast, knowledge management recognizes the need for information management but adds the critical capability to create, enhance, capture, approve, update, and distribute knowledge – and process – across an entire organization.

This change in focus increased Ondexx’s reputation in the Life and Reinsurance industry. This change brought reliability, ease of use, and affordability to the knowledge management solution space that was previously unavailable.

Ondexx continued to add modules and functions to the product, providing users 300+ features ‘out-of-the-box.’

Ondexx also became the ‘system of record’ for John Hancock and also signed agreements with MIB Group, Inc.

Ondexx earns SOC 2 Type II Certification.

SOC stands for “System and Organization Controls.” The controls are a series of standards designed to help measure how well a given service organization conducts and regulates its information. The purpose of SOC standards is to provide confidence and peace of mind for organizations when they engage third-party vendors. A SOC-certified organization is regularly audited by an independent certified public accountant who determines that the firm has the appropriate SOC safeguards and procedures in place.

SOC 2 Type II certification is specifically designed for service providers storing customer data in the cloud. It requires companies to establish and follow strict information security policies and procedures encompassing the security, availability, processing, integrity, and confidentiality of customer data.

Paul Quigley joined the Ondexx team in 2018 as CEO. A leader in the technology industry with a career built around bringing platforms and solutions to market made him the perfect fit for Ondexx.

Paul’s role brought decades of business-building experience and a renewed focus for Ondexx. His initial focus areas were marketing, partnerships, and verticalization of the solution.

Not only was Paul’s addition energizing for the organization, but his experience was also seen as essential for scaling the Ondexx solution globally.

Ondexx becomes FIPS 140-2 Compliant.

To be FIPS compliant, an organization must adhere to the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) to act in accordance with the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA). In 2014, FISMA was amended with critical updates in cybersecurity that provided regulatory oversight.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) Computer Security Division created FIPS, a set of computer system security standards. FISMA requires United States federal government agencies to reduce information technology risk to an acceptable level at a reasonable cost.

To be FIPS 140 compliant, a US government agency or contractor’s computer systems must meet the requirements outlined in FIPS publication #140.

FIPS 140 covers cryptographic module and testing requirements in both hardware and software, and for a technology to be FIPS 140-2 certified or validated, the software (and hardware) must be independently validated and certified by one of 13 NIST-specified laboratories.

Ondexx signed a partnership agreement with The Medical Information Bureau (MIB Group Inc.) to power MIB’s knowledge management solution. Ondexx now provides essential services to MIB’s 430+ member companies, supporting over 8,000 active daily users. This is a significant partnership for Ondexx, as MIB is one of the largest data providers in the world.

Ondexx moved its pricing model to a 100% subscription-based model.

Ondexx signed Sun Life on as a client.

Ondexx is officially announced as a standalone product under the new domain www.ondexx.com – the Ondexx team sees this as a mission-critical step to grow, with the objective of providing knowledge management solutions to global enterprises.

Ondexx continues to chart its path forward via its Ondexx product roadmap and plans to continue to add major new features to the product. This ongoing development will introduce AI to improve intuitive capture, distribution, and search capabilities for enterprise knowledge.