Emprise was incorporated by James J. Diaz on July 17, 1987. According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary the word "emprise" means

"an adventurous, daring, or chivalric enterprise."

In keeping with the spirit of this definition, Mr. Diaz set out to apply the expertise he gained as a maintenance engineer in the U.S. Navy submarine service to the commercial industry. He realized that the advanced technologies he was using, coupled with emerging micro-processors and computers, would be immensely valuable to predictive and preventative maintenance in the commercial industry. He set out to sell his expertise in these fields and to develop the tools needed to automate related parts of the industry.

Mr. Diaz's vision is now reality. Emprise Corporation began providing high-tech reliability engineering (condition monitoring) services and software to general industry. Early Emprise clients included Bristol-Myers, General Electric, American Overseas Marine (AMSEA), and Fynch-Pruyn Paper.

Initial services included machinery vibration analyses and in-place balancing using octave analyzers manufactured by Vibra-Metrics. These services quickly grew to include thermography, oil analysis, and process monitoring. The effect of the microprocessor on these technologies was galvanizing. Emprise Corporation was one of the first companies to move to the more advanced computerized technologies offered by companies such as Technology for Energy Corporation (TEC).

Emprise Corporation developed several software utilities to assist in the analysis of vibration. Some have been formalized and sold as commercial products to a limited number of facilities. Positive feedback provided the impetus for Emprise to develop its initial DOS Logbook application. In the words of Mr. Diaz,

"We were searching for a technology that would allow us to look at the reliability of a complete process rather than only a piece of the process. Vibration, thermography, and oil analysis are the foundation of condition monitoring (and remain a large portion of today's business), but process variable analysis is the wave of the future. If an organization is already logging information on paper, from my point of view the transformation from a paper logbook to Emprise's Logbook is as natural as moving from a typewriter (an IBM Selectric) to a word processor: The advantages are tremendous."

Just as Logbook simplifies and automates engineering log-keeping, ShipsLog, another Emprise application, simplifies and automates maritime log-keeping. ShipsLog was the first (and remains the only) U.S. Coast Guard-approved software for vessel log-keeping. Mr. Diaz summarizes Emprise's initiatives:

"If there is one item in our development as a company that stands out as the most fulfilling, it is our ability to develop our own long-range analytic tools. Today's production of hardware and software began as yesterday's dream."