Kantega was founded as an employee-owned company in 2003. However, the company can trace it roots back to Taskon—a Norwegian IT company founded in 1986. This company developed its own object orientation methodology and OO design tools, which had some international success. Taskon contributed its object-oriented methodology to the Object Management Group during the standardization process of UML, as part of a joint standards proposal with IBM and Ptech. Taskon merged with Numerica in 1998, and with Internet Aksess in 1999, which had launched the world's first public mobile web bank on September 24,1999 using the emerging WAP standard. In December 1999 the company was bought by the Nordic Internet Consultancy Mogul Group In 2002, the company became the first Norwegian member of WS-I. The early focus on web services technology and standards laid the foundation for a strong position in the emerging market for solutions based on Service Oriented Architecture. In 2003 the Swedish IT group Adera launched a public tender for the Mogul group. During the tender period the Norwegian part of the group was bought out by the employees. For a short period the restructured Norwegian company used the former name Taskon, before it changed its name to Kantega. In 2005 Kantega created the secure web services architectures for the Norwegian government's citizen portal MyPage, which offers a unified view to personal data stored in public registers and the opportunity to submit online applications and notifications. This technology was later used as basis for a service oriented architecture for the pension fund industry, which in 2007 hired Kantega to build Norsk Pensjon, a common internet portal for all major pension funds in Norway, providing all citizens with a unified view of their personal pension holdings across all asset managers. In 2005 Kantega became the first Norwegian member of Liberty Alliance, signalling an increased focus on internet identity solutions. One year later Kantega created the subsidiary Kantega Secure Identity, which offered the first online identity provider service covering the Nordic countries. In 2007 the subsidiary had received a large market share in the emerging Scandinavian online identity provider market, and was spun off as an independent company under the name Signicat. The successful spin-off attracted 10 million NOK in venture funding in 2008. The global newspaper Financial Times named Kantega on its 2007 and 2008 lists of the 100 Best Workplaces in Europe. In 2008 the employee-owned company was also recognized as the most family-friendly workplace in Norway.
