Open Market
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Ecommerce software |
| Founded | 1994 |
| Headquarters | Burlington, Massachusetts , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | Open Market Web Server, Transact, OM Express, OM Axcess, OM e-Business Suite |
| Parent | Divine (2001–2003) |
Open Market was an ecommerce software company established in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1994. It went public in 1996 on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker symbol OMKT, becoming one of the earliest ecommerce companies to launch an IPO. On its initial trading day, the stock price more than doubled, resulting in a market valuation of $1.2 billion. The firm moved its headquarters to Burlington, Massachusetts in early 1998.
In 1999, Open Market acquired Future Tense, a company founded in 1995, to combine its ecommerce solutions with Future Tense's content management system technology.
Divine purchased Open Market in 2001 for approximately $59 million. Divine subsequently declared bankruptcy in early 2003. That same year, Soverain Software obtained Open Market’s ecommerce assets, including the TRANSACT platform. Concurrently, FatWire Software acquired the content management division from Divine’s bankruptcy estate and has since enhanced the software while continuing to support the original clientele.
In 2011, Oracle acquired FatWire, and today Open Market’s content management system is marketed as Oracle WebCenter Sites.
Products and technology
Open Market created several significant software offerings, such as:
- Open Market Web Server: One of the earliest commercial HTTP servers, recognized for its scalable threading design. Its Secure Web Server version supported S-HTTP and SSL protocols.
- Transact: The company’s ecommerce platform known for incorporating cryptographic features to secure digital offers and receipts, thereby improving online transaction security and capabilities.
- OM Express: An early form of an offline web browser.
- OM Axcess: A solution for centralized website access control.
- OM e-Business Suite: A WCM originally acquired from FutureTense and later extensively developed.
Open Market was also the originator of FastCGI, a high-efficiency variant of the CGI interface initially implemented within its own web server products and subsequently adopted broadly by other web servers.
The company held essential patents related to online commerce innovations, including those covering shopping cart technology (filed 1994), session identifiers (filed 1998), and internet-based credit card payment systems (filed 1998).