Vermeer Technologies Incorporated was a software company founded in 1994 by Charles H. Ferguson and Randy Forgaard. Its products were a

Web site A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, education, ...

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. Vermeer was funded by

Matrix Partners Matrix (formerly Matrix Partners) is a US-based venture capital investment firm. The firm invests in seed and early-stage companies in the United States and India, particularly in the software, communications, semiconductors, data storage, Int ...

, Sigma Partners, and Atlas Venture. The company was purchased by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

for

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

133 million in January 1996 ($ in present-day terms). Microsoft acquired FrontPage as a new weapon in the

browser wars A browser war is a competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "first browser war" (1995–2001) occurred between proponents of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, and the "second browser war" (2004–2017) between tho ...

. 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.

References

Microsoft Press release announcing Vermeer acquisition

Defunct software companies of the United States Microsoft acquisitions American companies established in 1994 Companies disestablished in 1996 {{Ict-company-stub