It was originally introduced, I believe, by S&W for their .356 TS&W handguns specifically aimed at the IPSC crowd. It was championed by the "Team Smith & Wesson" shooting team, Jerry Mickulek, Judy Woolley, and others.
The concept was to allow a 9mm cartridge to make "major" classification and still have a high mag. capacity.
It was chambered in 3 variants of the 3566, and was distributed by Lew Horton.
I've fired one of these, courtesy of a shooter at the range where I used to work. Nice guns, but the cartridge never really caught on.