Quarterdeck Office Systems
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 1981 |
| Founder | Therese Myers, Gary Pope |
| Defunct | 1998 |
| Fate | Acquired by Symantec |
| Headquarters | Marina del Rey, California , United States |
Area served | United States, Europe |
Key people | King R. Lee (interim CEO), Gaston Bastiaens (CEO), Curtis Hessler (CEO), Anatoly Tikhman (Co-CEO) |
| Products | Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager (QEMM), DESQview, CleanSweep, DESQview/X, Quarterdeck Mosaic, Manifest, Partition-It!, MagnaRAM, WinProbe, HiJaak Graphics Suite, PROCOMM, DoubleDisk, Fix-It |
| Parent | Symantec |
Quarterdeck Office Systems, which later became known as Quarterdeck Corporation (NASDAQ: QDEK), was a U.S.-based software enterprise founded by Therese Myers and Gary Pope in 1981 and officially incorporated in 1982. The company originally operated out of Santa Monica, California, before relocating its headquarters to Marina del Rey. Throughout the 1990s, it maintained additional sales and support centers in Clearwater, Florida, as well as a European branch located in Dublin. Among its prominent software offerings were Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager, DESQview, CleanSweep, DESQview/X, the Quarterdeck version of Mosaic, Manifest, and Partition-It.
On April 18, 1989, Quarterdeck was granted a U.S. software patent that allowed multiple windowed applications to run concurrently under the MS-DOS operating system.
After experiencing a significant drop in revenue and market capitalization in 1995, interim CEO King R. Lee appointed Gaston Bastiaens as CEO to broaden the company's product portfolio through strategic acquisitions. That year, Quarterdeck purchased Landmark Research International Corp., gaining products such as MagnaRAM and WinProbe, in exchange for 3.5 million shares. It also acquired Inset Systems, Inc., based in Brookfield, Connecticut, thereby adding the HiJaak graphics software to its lineup for 933,000 shares.
In March 1996, Quarterdeck expanded further by acquiring Datastorm Technologies, Inc., known for PROCOMM and PROCOMM PLUS communications software; technical support and development operations were subsequently moved to Datastorm’s headquarters in Columbia, Missouri. Later that July, the company purchased Vertisoft Systems—publisher of utility programs like DoubleDisk and Fix-It—for 3.5 million shares. Both Landmark and Vertisoft significantly boosted revenues through their direct marketing channels.
Following Bastiaens’ departure in August 1996, acting Co-CEOs King R. Lee and Anatoly Tikhman (who had formerly served as Vertisoft’s CEO) managed the company through a period of restructuring amid financial losses. Curtis Hessler assumed the CEO role in January 1997.
By 1998, with its primary market for DOS-based utilities largely diminished, Quarterdeck was acquired by Symantec at a price of $0.52 per share. Symantec discontinued select products such as Mosaic but integrated others like CleanSweep into its Norton SystemWorks product suite.
List of software products
- CleanSweep
- DESQ (the predecessor to DESQview)
- DESQview (compatible with IBM TopView)
- DESQview 386 (packaged with QEMM 386)
- DESQview/X (version based on X Window System)
- GameRunner
- GlobalChat IRC client
- GlobalStage IRC server (hosted on irc.scifi.com until 2003)
- HiJaak Graphics Suite
- MagnaRAM
- Manifest
- Partition-It!
- QEMM (Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager, previously QEMM 386)
- Quarterdeck InternetSuite
- Quarterdeck Message Center
- Quarterdeck Mosaic web browser
- Quarterdeck Sidebar
- QRAM (expanded memory manager for Intel 80286 processors)
- TotalWeb
- ViruSweep
- Quarterdeck WebAuthor for Word
- WebCompass (an early meta-search engine)
- WebStar (acquired via StarNine)
- WebTalk
- Files.com