Vermeer Technologies
Software company founded in 1994
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vermeer Technologies Incorporated was a software company founded in 1994 by Charles H. Ferguson and Randy Forgaard. Its products were a Web site development tool, FrontPage, and a Web server, Personal Web Server, which complemented developing in FrontPage. Vermeer launched the initial version of FrontPage on October 2, 1995.[citation needed]
Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1994 |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
Key people | Charles H. Ferguson |
| Products | Truck, Agriculture, Web site, Browser wars |
| Parent | Microsoft Corporation |
Vermeer was funded by Matrix Partners, Sigma Partners, and Atlas Venture.[citation needed]
The company was purchased by Microsoft for US$133 million in January 1996 ($273 million in present-day terms[1]). Microsoft acquired FrontPage as a new weapon in the browser wars.[citation needed]
The company's birth, development, and sale were the subject of Ferguson's 1999 book, High St@kes, No Prisoners.
A Harvard Business School case, "Vermeer Technologies (A): A Company is Born" (HBS 9-397-078), described the start of the company.
Even after Microsoft acquired FrontPage, the software continued to store proprietary configuration settings in directories whose names started with _vti. The letters "VTI" stand for Vermeer Technologies, Inc.
