Interface Technologies Corporation

Interface Technologies Corporation was formed in Texas, USA, in January 1984 by Bob Warfield. The company developed and sold a Modula-2 compiler and environment for DOS called ITC Modula-2 Software Development System (also known as M2-SDS-XT). But with sales of that being rather slack, introduced an integrated spreadsheet, word processor and database called Farsight that sold reasonably. Neither product was really marketed to any degree and therefore suffered from rather lackluster sales but the company was kept alive with a deal they made with an educational supplier that sold their software to educational institutions and student at a discount. Farsight in particular became relatively well known amongst business students that got the software at a considerable discount and used it as a Lotus 1-2-3 alternative.

The lack of success for Farsight as an integrated software and the tendency of reviewers to list it as a spreadsheet program caused the company to seek out venture capital injection to help them develop the package further as a spreadsheet. This lead to the company splitting up, the application development portion of the business relocated to California in 1986 and incorporating under the name Farsight Software Inc., but trading under the name Surpass Software Systems, while the development tools business stayed in Texas and to augment its business started distributing some European development tools alongside its own.

Farsight Software started marketing the Farsight integrated package better and focused on developing the spreadsheet capability of the program which was released in 1987 as Surpass, a Lotus 1-2-3 compatible spreadsheet that had a number of features that the competition did not have and got rave reviews in the PC press. The company was taken over by Borland in January 1988 who later released Surpass under the Quattro Pro name.

The company had a few venture capital investors that were known from the early days of microcomputing such as Seymour I. Rubinstein (ex-MicroPro) but there is no indication that any of them had an active role in the company except as board members.

Products

 * Farsight - Integrated software/Spreadsheet
 * ITC Modula-2 Software Development System - Modula-2 system with an interesting IDE.
 * Surpass - Spreadsheet

Personnel

 * Robert W. "Bob" Warfield - CEO (Later with Borland)

Links

 * Robert W. Warfield: The New Interface Technology - Byte magazine Vol 8 (1983), issue 12, page 218.