NCompass Labs Inc

NCompass Labs was a Vancouver-based software company^[1] that developed NCompass Resolution,^[2] a web content management software package. The company was acquired in 2001 by Microsoft^[3] for $36 million.^[4]

History

NCompass Labs was founded by Gerri Sinclair, Kerem Karatal and Kristof Roomp in 1996, who were working at the ExCITE Center,^[5] a multimedia research group at Simon Fraser University.^[6]

The initial product of the company was a plug-in for hosting ActiveX controls in Netscape Navigator named ScriptActive,^[7] which was developed in cooperation with Microsoft.^[8] The company also developed a plug-in named DocActive, which hosted Microsoft Office documents in Netscape, which was licensed to Microsoft and shipped as part of the Microsoft Office 97 Document Viewer.^[9]

In 1997 the company changed direction releasing a Microsoft Windows-based content managed product named ActiveEnterprise.^[5] Later the name of the product was changed to NCompass Resolution.^[2]

In 2001 Microsoft purchased the company for approximately $36 million,^[10] and re-released NCompass Resolution branded as Microsoft Content Management Server in 2002.^[11]