Dash, Inc. was founded in 1987 with the charter of filling the VAR channel's need for a strong regional distributor that could offer a broad product line and comprehensive technical support to Kansas City VAR's and their clients.

Before Dash, Dave Allen, President of Dash, built his career on bringing technology to the PC industry.  Holder of three patents relating to magnetic recording, Mr. Allen founded Tallgrass Technologies in 1981.  Tallgrass began shipping the industry's first hard-disk system for IBM-PC computers in November 1981 and the first tape backup system for PC's in 1982.

As a result of a support-centered approach, Dash has survived during its 24-year history while competing distributors have come and gone. Dash's customers are almost exclusively VARs, whose clients range from small to Fortune-500.  Dash was the first in the region to offer full system-integration services to its VAR's.

Building on a background in product development and manufacturing, Dash formed a second division in 1990. This division developed and manufactured the Open Phone System, a PC-based telephone PBX, utilizing generic microcomputer technology and an open application-software architecture. In 1997 the PBX division was sold to a California-based startup, Picazo Communications. Later, the Open Phone System Division was acquired by Intel, who retained the patents and other intellectual property, and sold the rights to manufacture the product to Telecor in Canada. The Open Phone System continues today, in Canada, bringing the advances of the personal computer revolution to business telecommunications.

For the PC industry, Dash developed a line of industrial PC enclosures, that included ruggedized truck-mounted PC equipment developed for Pepsi Food Service, and a line of rack mounted chassis and cabinets for use as servers and disk-arrays.

Dash has shipped up to 600 complete systems per month, in addition to parts, to its VARs' for resale.