HISTORY
- Founded in September 1985 as NeXT Computer, Inc. by Steven P. Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, Inc., and five Apple senior managers.
- From 1985 - 1989 developed and marketed the NeXTcube (formerly the NeXT Computer) and NeXTstation product family. This included the NEXTSTEP operating system created for developing and deploying object-oriented applications for machines from such names as Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Intel.
- By 1992, according to analyst firm International Data Corporation (IDC), NeXT became the fourth largest domestic supplier of UNIX workstations in the United States.
- February 1993, company ceased manufacturing the NeXTcube and NeXTstation and announced it would focus on developing industry standard object-oriented software for mainstream computer platforms.
- November 1993, decided to "open" NEXTSTEP and introduced OPENSTEP, an API based on NeXT's advanced object technology that allows portability of applications regardless of the underlying operating system or hardware.
- 1993, made a commitment to provide customers with professional services to assure satisfaction with NeXT products throughout the application development/deployment lifecycle.
- 1994, NeXT shipped Enterprise Objects Framework, a breakthrough technology that integrates NEXTSTEP-based object-oriented applications with data from leading relational databases.
- 1995, increased market share to become the third largest supplier of object development tools, preceded by Microsoft and Borland International, neither of which focused exclusively on object-oriented technology.
- 1995, leveraging its market position, unveiled WebObjects, its solution for building robust server-based applications for the World Wide Web.
- December 1995, changed company name to NeXT Software, Inc.
- July 1996, unveiled OPENSTEP Enterprise, an object-oriented environment to assemble, integrate, and universally deploy dynamic business applications across the Enterprise.
- October 1996, shipped third release in a year of WebObjects and unveiled its strategy to support Sun's Java programming language.
- December 1996, had licensed WebObjects to more than 275 customers and deployed applications in more than 35 leading companies worldwide.
- February, 1997, acquired by Apple Computer to strengthen Apple's offerings of development software for the enterprise and Internet, and to enrich the Apple user's experience with a high-performance operating environment.
Taken from http://web.archive.org/web/19970412200216/www.next.com/AboutNeXT/NeXTBackgrounder.html
