Database-driven publishing
All code, content, and assets stored in a database and served dynamically. Multi-site staging environments for live, development, and test. What is now called a CMS headless architecture, built in Delphi 5 in 2000.
DFinity: a true CMS before the term existed.
A fully database-driven dynamic web platform built for ICI Paints in 2000. Every page, every image, every line of content stored in and served from a database. Borland Application of the Year. Three years before WordPress.
What DFinity did
Multi-site at scale
Powered 50+ websites across 70 countries for ICI Paints brands: Dulux UK, Dulux Ireland, Hammerite, Glidden, and Polycell. A single platform managing content across multiple languages, markets, and brand identities.
Content without developers
Business and marketing teams could update content, manage images, and configure pages without code changes. The same principle that drove configurable software then drives Rubicon's approach now.
Recognition
2000
Borland Application of the Year
2001
CRM Innovation of the Year, ICI Paints
2002
dulux.co.uk: Most Useful Internet Website
70+
countries served
Heritage
DFinity taught us to build platforms where non-technical teams control their own content, where a single codebase serves multiple clients, and where the data model is the product. Those lessons sit underneath everything Rubicon has built since.
In 2016, the DFINITY Foundation in Zürich chose the same name for their Internet Computer blockchain project. A coincidence, and a long story.
Racing connection
In 2003, Rubicon sponsored Team BCR in the inaugural Porsche Carrera Cup GB. Car #20 ran in full Rubicon livery, with the DFinity logo alongside Accelerator and the Rubicon brand. Team BCR won the Teams' Championship that year. The DFinity name was visible on a championship-winning car.
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