ON Technology

ON Technology Corporation was a software company in the United States. Formed in 1987 by Mitch Kapor after his departure from Lotus Software, the initial business plan of the company was to build an object-oriented PC desktop environment providing a variety of applications. In (roughly) the early 1990s, the company was acquired by Notework Corporation, a vendor of LAN email systems. Although the merged company was now managed by the Notework Corporation, the company still retained the ON Technology name (which new management perceived had more cache/brand.)

Following its acquisition by Notework Corporation, ON Technology proceeded to expand its product line through a series of small product/company acquisitions, including email software (DaVinci, a message handling system-based email product), antivirus technology, corporate Internet usage monitoring, IP firewall, and desktop systems management.

In 1995, the company went public, providing additional structural methods to perform most of the product acquisitions listed above.

The company distinguished itself through its go-to-market model, incorporating a 30-day free trial alongside significant marketing and telesales to reach a large number of small to medium-sized customers.

In 1998, the company restructured its operations and sold off its "free-trial" small/medium business products to Elron Software. It retained "enterprise-sized" products (the MeetingMaker calendaring product and the ON Command CCM desktop systems management product) which it sold using a more traditional enterprise software business model.

ON divested its Meeting Maker product in a private transaction to a private investor, who later sold the technology to PeopleCube. The only remaining technology at this point was the systems management software, then branded as "CCM."

ON was acquired by Symantec on October 27, 2003. to assist Symantec's move into the desktop systems management business.