FastLane Technologies
Encyclopedia
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
software company originally based in Ottawa, Ontario
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
. On June 29, 2000, it was purchased by US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-based Quest Software
Quest Software
Quest Software is a computer software manufacturer headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California. Founded in 1987, Quest develops, manufactures and supports software used by Information Technology professionals in a variety of industries...
for $100 million USD
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
.
FastLane's first, and at that time only product was an interpreted
Interpreted language
Interpreted language is a programming language in which programs are 'indirectly' executed by an interpreter program. This can be contrasted with a compiled language which is converted into machine code and then 'directly' executed by the host CPU...
programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
called FINAL!! (FastLane Interpreted Network Application Language). FINAL (the exclamation marks were eventually dropped from the product name) was a high level language targeted at administrators of medium to large scale Banyan
Banyan (company)
Banyan Systems, Inc. was founded in 1983 by David C. Mahoney, a software engineer and mid-level manager at Data General, Larry Floryan and Anand Jagannathan. The company's distinctive logo, a Banyan tree, and the logo's allegorical representation of Banyan's product suite, VINES, were conceived by...
VINES
Banyan VINES
Banyan VINES was a computer network operating system and the set of computer network protocols it used to talk to client machines on the network. The Banyan company based the VINES operating system on Unix, and the network protocols on the archetypical Xerox XNS stack...
networks (Banyan later became known as ePresence). Its primary benefit was the ability to automate repetitive network administration tasks without requiring extensive programming experience. The language syntax was based largely on a combination of both C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
/C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
and Pascal.
FastLane was originally founded by David Seguin, Eric Kitchen, and Andy McAfee in 1993. Andy McAfee's interest in the company was acquired early in the company's history by the remaining two partners. In 1996, Newbridge Networks
Newbridge Networks
Newbridge Networks was an Ottawa, Ontario, Canada company founded by Welsh-Canadian entrepreneur Sir Terry Matthews. It was founded in 1986 to create data and voice networking products after Matthews was forced out of his original company Mitel...
(which was later acquired by France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
-based Alcatel
Alcatel
Alcatel Mobile Phones is a brand of mobile handsets. It was established in 2004 as a joint venture between Alcatel-Lucent of France and TCL Communication of China....
) and Celtic House (a VC
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
firm associated with then-Newbridge CEO
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
Terry Matthews
Terry Matthews
Sir Terence Hedley Matthews OBE, FIEE, FREng is a Welsh business magnate, serial high tech entrepreneur, and Wales's first billionaire....
) had acquired a 49% stake in the still privately owned FastLane. Part of this capital investment deal included moving company headquarters from Ottawa to Halifax, Nova Scotia
Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia
Halifax Regional Municipality is the capital of the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. The Regional Municipality had a 2006 census population of 372,679, while the metropolitan area had a 2010 estimated population of 403,188, and the urban area of Halifax had a population of 282,924...
. This move was in part to gain access to the cheaper labour market, and in part to take advantage of tax breaks offered by bringing new high-tech jobs to the city. Pundits at the time speculated that the deal was driven by close personal ties between Terry Matthews and then-Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
premier
Premier (Canada)
In Canada, a premier is the head of government of a province or territory. There are currently ten provincial premiers and three territorial premiers in Canada....
John Savage
John Savage (politician)
John Patrick Savage, OC, ONS was the 23rd Premier of Nova Scotia, Canada between 1993 and 1997.- Welsh birth :Born in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, and keeping his Welsh accent to the end, Savage graduated from Queen's University of Belfast and practiced as a Medical doctor in Newport until he...
. At the time of the move, FastLane had only half a dozen employees.
By this time FastLane had expanded its product line to include complete software products developed in the aforementioned FINAL language. The first of these products was Flyte (later renamed DM/Flyte) - a Banyan VINES to Windows NT
Windows NT
Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...
3.51 migration tool - the company's first foray into the Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
product arena. Other products of this era included what was then called the Phoenix Domain Reconfiguration Tool for Windows NT. Due to a trademark dispute with Phoenix Techologies, this product was later renamed DM/Manager. Other notable early products included Virtual Administrator (later renamed to DM/Administrator), and Reporter (DM/Reporter).
By the time of the acquisition by Quest, FastLane had expanded to approximately 200 employees. The Halifax and Ottawa presence survived the acquisition, and those locations continue to play an important role in that company's product development cycle today.