Six years after besting Microsoft out of $83 million in the courtroom, Stac Software Inc. officially has disappeared, changing its name to Previo Inc. and its Nasdaq market symbol to PRVO.

The company says the new name reflects its new focus on the e-support market. Operating from modest offices in Del Mar Heights, it will try to sell the last vestiges of Stac, where the emphasis was on software that made the PC run better. Stac's rightful claim to fame was its superb Stacker disk compression software that Microsoft was found guilty of illegally incorporating into the then-newest version of its computer operating system, MS-DOS 6.0.

Cash-wise, Stac/Previo is in good shape. The company has $30.8 million of cash or equivalents on hand. But it is struggling to make a profit selling computer utility programs. In the second quarter that ended March 31, Stac lost $2.3 million on revenue of $2.1 million, compared to a loss of $188,000 on revenue of $3.37 million in the same period a year earlier.

"Previo's e-support focus is bringing important opportunities to apply our key intellectual properties to major information devices such as those used in wireless and other emerging networks," says Chairman Gary Clow. He founded Stac in 1983 but about four years ago brought John Ticer in as CEO and stopped taking an active role in the company’s management. Clow's bio doesn’t even appear on the Web site where key executives are listed.

Stac's struggles to capitalize on its victory over Microsoft were chronicled in the cover story for the April 1999 edition of San Diego Metropolitan. The feature can be found at www.sandiegometro.com/1999/apr/index.html.

—SD Metro Staff