Interface Technologies Corporation
A company formed in Texas, USA, in January 1984 by Bob Warfield. that developed and sold a Modula-2 compiler and environment for DOS called ITC STS-XP (also known as M2SDS), 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 discount, Farsight in particular became relatively well known amongst business student 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, this lead to the company relocating to California in 1986 and renaming itself Farsight Software Inc.. The company started marketing the Farsight 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.
The company was taken over by Borland in January 1988 and they closed down the development tools business but 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.
Known products
- Farsight - Integrated software/Spreadsheet
- ITC STS-XP - Modula-2 development system.
- Surpass - Spreadsheet.
Links
- Robert W. Warfield: The New Interface Technology - Byte magazine Vol 8 (1983), issue 12, page 218.
Personnel
- Robert W. "Bob" Warfield - CEO (Later with Borland)