The Omni Group

What does The Omni Group own?
The Omni Group owns and develops four productivity applications for Apple platforms: OmniFocus (task management), OmniGraffle (diagramming and visual communication), OmniPlan (project management), and OmniOutliner (structured outlining). The company also operates OmniPresence, a free document synchronization service. All products are sold exclusively for macOS, iOS, watchOS, and visionOS.

Is The Omni Group publicly traded?
No, The Omni Group is not publicly traded. The company is a privately held, employee-owned business with no stock exchange listing. It has never accepted outside investment and has operated independently since its founding, funding its operations entirely through product revenue.

Who founded The Omni Group?
The Omni Group was founded by Wil Shipley, Ken Case, and Tim Wood. The three began working together informally in 1989 as NEXTSTEP platform consultants and incorporated as Omni Development, Inc. in 1993. Wil Shipley departed in 2004 to co-found Delicious Monster. Ken Case has served as CEO since 2003 and continues in that role.

Where is The Omni Group headquartered?
The Omni Group is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, where it has been based since its founding. The company does not have offices in other locations, with its team working from Seattle and remotely.

How many brands does The Omni Group own?
The Omni Group operates four primary application brands: OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, OmniPlan, and OmniOutliner. The company also provides OmniPresence as a supporting synchronization service. All products operate under the Omni brand identity and are designed to work together within the Apple device ecosystem.

Who owns The Omni Group?
The Omni Group is owned by its employees and founders, with no external shareholders or parent organization. Co-founder and CEO Ken Case holds a significant ownership stake. The employee-owned structure has been maintained since the company's founding and is a deliberate part of its operating philosophy. The company has never been acquired and has not accepted venture capital or private equity investment.

What is The Omni Group's revenue?
The Omni Group does not publicly disclose its revenue or financial results. As a private, employee-owned company with no obligation to report to public markets or external investors, it has no requirement to publish financial statements. The company is understood to be profitable based on its sustained independent operation over more than three decades, but specific revenue figures are not available.

The Omni Group's origins trace to 1989, when Wil Shipley, Ken Case, and Tim Wood began working together informally as consultants on the NEXTSTEP platform, the operating system developed by NeXT, the company Steve Jobs founded after leaving Apple. NEXTSTEP was notable for its object-oriented development environment, and the three founders built custom database software for clients including the William Morris Agency and McCaw Cellular Communications, which later became Cingular Wireless and is now AT&T.

The three incorporated together in 1993 under the name Omni Development, Inc. The name "Omni Group" was already taken by another Seattle firm at the time of incorporation, so the legal entity used the Omni Development name while operating publicly as The Omni Group. The company continued its NEXTSTEP consulting work and also ported a number of games to the platform.

When Apple acquired NeXT in 1997, bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple and incorporating NEXTSTEP technology into what became Mac OS X, The Omni Group was well positioned to develop applications for the new platform. The company had deep expertise in the development frameworks that underpinned Mac OS X, and it began building consumer-facing applications as the new operating system gained adoption.

Around 2000, The Omni Group made a deliberate strategic shift away from consulting work and toward developing its own consumer and professional applications. OmniGraffle, a diagramming and visual communication tool, emerged from this period and became one of the company's first widely recognized products. OmniGraffle won two Apple Design Awards at the Macintosh Worldwide Developers Conference in 2001 for Best Mac OS X User Experience and Best New Mac OS X Product, establishing the company's reputation for design quality.

In 2002, OmniGraffle 2.0 won two additional Apple Design Awards. OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle also won Macworld Editors' Choice Awards, and the company received a MacUser UK "Maxine" award and Macworld Expo Best of Show recognition, cementing its standing as a leading developer in the Mac software community.

In 2003, Ken Case took over as the company's chief officer, a role he has held continuously since. That same year, co-founder Wil Shipley departed in March 2004 along with interface designer Mike Matas to found Delicious Monster, a cataloging software company. Matas later left Delicious Monster to join Apple. Tim Wood remained with The Omni Group.

OmniFocus, the company's task management application based on David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology, launched in 2008 and became the company's most commercially significant product. OmniFocus addressed a gap in the market for a powerful, flexible task management system designed specifically for Mac and iOS users who found simpler applications insufficient for managing complex personal and professional workloads.

OmniPlan, a project management application for planning and scheduling complex projects, expanded the company's reach into team and enterprise use cases. The application supports Gantt charts, resource leveling, and critical path analysis, positioning it as a tool for project managers who require more capability than consumer-grade applications provide.

The Omni Group has consistently supported new Apple platforms at or near their launch. The company released OmniFocus for iPhone when the App Store opened in 2008, developed Apple Watch integrations when watchOS launched in 2015, and built support for Apple Vision Pro when the spatial computing platform launched in 2024. The company's 2025 roadmap, presented by CEO Ken Case, outlined plans for OmniFocus 4 evolution, an OmniGraffle 8 redesign, smarter automation, and deeper Apple Intelligence integration.

The company celebrated its 30th anniversary as an incorporated entity in 2023, having maintained its employee-owned structure and Apple platform focus throughout a period in which many independent software developers were acquired by larger companies or pivoted to cross-platform or web-based models.