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HCL Technologies

HCL Technologies – The Foundation Stone of the Pillar Of Indian IT Industry

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HCL Technologies is an Indian IT services and consulting company, the foundation stone of the Indian IT industry and way ahead of its time. Shiv Nadar founded HCL 44 years ago on 11 August 1976, with the idea of making computer hardware easily accessible to Indian consumers and HCL a common household brand. HCL Technologies is a multinational company with its headquarters located in Noida, India. The company specializes in software development, computer hardware manufacturing, outsourcing, consulting managed services, etc.

About HCL Technologies

HCL Technologies has a huge client base across the world, over 250 Fortune 500 companies being some of them. The company has expanded its operations overseas and has its offices located in countries like the US, the UK, France, Germany, etc., and over 160,00 people are working for it globally. The fields the company works in include banking, capital market, defense, aerospace, healthcare, hi-tech, insurance, media and entertainment, telecom, travel, etc. As of 2021, the company made revenues worth US$11 billion and owns total equity worth US$8.3 billion.

HCL Technologies
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The Back Story of HCL Technologies

In 1976, Shiv Nadar lead a team of five people, all colleagues from  Delhi Cloth & General Mills, to establish a teledigital calculators selling company named Microcomp Limited. The sole reason behind founding the company was to achieve their dream of starting up a computer manufacturing and selling company and raise money for it. On 11 August the same year, Nadar renamed Microcomp Limited to Hindustan Computer Limited.

Yet again, another name change took place, when in 1991 the founder built another company to provide technology development services with the name HCL Overseas Limited. This was the beginning of a new chapter as the new company was doing exactly what the founders had dreamt of, making and selling computers. In 1992, the company received the certificate of commencement of business, and the company started its journey as an authorized computer manufacturer and seller. The company became HCL Consulting Limited in 1994.             

In 1999 the R&D department of the HCL group became HCL Technologies Limited. HCL Technologies, HCL Infosystems, HCL Healthcare, HCL TalentCare are the four divisions of HCL Corporation. HCL Technologies is specifically into software services, business process outsourcing, and infrastructure services. The company is credited as the pioneer of the development and growth of the IT and computer industry in India.

HCL Technologies
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Though during the initial years of the company, Hindustan Computer Limited was selling teledigital calculators, the company’s focus was entirely on building personal computers and related hardware. It developed an indigenous microcomputer in 1978, and in 1980, the company opened its first international company branch in Singapore to sell IT hardware, with the name Far East Computers.

In 1983, it also introduced a networking OS and client-server architecture. During the 90s, the company targeted the software solutions development for its US and European clients as well as the APAC market. On 10 November 1999, HCL had its first IPO, and it also established a development center in Chennai in 2000.

Acquisitions

Starting from the year 2000, HCL has made some big acquisitions in the field of service outsourcing, telecommunication services, SAP, CRM-consulting, automation, IT and engineering service, etc. It acquired Gulf Computers Inc. in 2002. Between 2008 to 2009, the company made acquisitions like Capital Stream Inc., Liberata Financial Service, Control Point Solutions, Inc., Axon Group Plc. and UCS Group’s Enterprise Solutions SAP Practice.

In 2015, the company acquired Concept to Silicon Systems and PowerObjects, followed by the acquisition of Geometric Ltd (2016), Part of Volvo IT (2016), Butler America Aerospace  (2017), H&D International Group (2018), Actian (2018), and Sankalp Semiconductor (2019), etc.

The Founder: Shiv Nadar

Shiv Nadar is a famous Indian businessman who founded HCL Technologies in 1976. He is known for his innovative approach to business and is credited for his contribution to the growth of the IT industry in India. He is one of the richest people in India and has won one of the biggest honors of India, Padma Bhushan, for his efforts in the development of the IT industry in India.

Nadar was born on 14 July 1945, in Moolaipozhi, Tamil Nadu, India. During his childhood, he switched between multiple schools and completed his high school education at St. Joseph Boys Higher Secondary School, Trichy. He earned a pre-university degree in the American College, Madurai, and completed a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore.

Nadar started his career at Walchand group’s College of Engineering, Pune (COEP), in 1967, but left the job to found his own company, which today is known as HCL Technologies.

Square Inc

Square Inc – An American Company providing Digital Payment Services since 2009.

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Square Inc is a company booming in the realm of financial technology and services. The company was founded by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey in 2009. Started off as a company to help small retailers and vendors accept credit cards but slowly ITV started expanding and broadened its customer base to big enterprises as well. The company’s headquarters is based in San Francisco, California and it is one of the largest companies in the financial technology sectors across the globe. So, let’s have a look at where it all began.

The Founding Story of Square Inc

Before co-founding Square Inc with Jim McKelvey, Jack Dorsey served as the CEO of Twitter. He stepped down from the position to establish Square Inc. The main idea behind founding this company was to make credit cards with tech that will be able to transmit data through the headphone jack of a smartphone.

To get the company up and running, both of them needed funding from investors. Since the co-founders hailed from a highly rich professional background, they were able to raise a total of $10 million in Series A funding. Some of the investors include Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter) and Marissa Mayer (former CEO of Yahoo!). After receiving this funding, Square Inc developed its first product which was a square-shaped credit card reader. So, after a year of establishment, Square Inc rolled out its first product and also launched an app for both iOS and Android.

Square Inc
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The company eventually started booming as it witnessed transactions worth millions of dollars every week. So, the co-founders decided to conduct another round of funding in January 2011. The money raised in this round was $27.5 million and the net valuation of the company became $230 million. During this time, Visa bought a small stake in the company.

Growth of Square Inc

In the early months of 2011, the company processed around $3 million per day. Seeing the number of users increasing per day, Square Inc made a deal with Apple so that the devices of the company are sold at Apple Stores. This increased the visibility of the brand and attracted more investors. After the next funding round, the valuation of the company became $1 billion. So, a young brand became a billion-dollar company within a span of three years and that was just the early days.

Since Square focused mainly on retailers, businesses, and small vendors, it built a lot of apps over the years to enhance digital payment processing, creating online stores, etc. One of the best services provided by Square Inc is Square Capital which analyzes data from merchant’s sales and provides advance loans using Square’s credit card processor. With the services provided by Square Inc, more businesses were able to create an online presence. In 2012, the company hosted Series D funding and raised $200 million and after two years it conducted Series E making a total worth of Square Inc $6 billion.

Uncertain Times

The company was making good money but its partnership with Starbucks led to a huge monetary loss. The company also went through some turmoil in 2015 when it was planning to file an IPO. During this time, Jack Dorsey became the interim CEO of Twitter and he had to handle both companies at the same time. So, after Square Inc started trading as a public company, the share prices dropped at the beginning and for one year the journey was a bit rocky.

Though the company lost millions in the partnership with Starbucks and found it difficult to trade as a public company after a year it was all getting back on track. From 2017 the company started recovering from its failure and decided to go international by expanding its services in the UK market. Given that the shares of Square were falling in 2016, the shares grew to 150% in 2018. In time, the company has also made a few acquisitions like Weebly and most recently gained majority ownership in Tidal.

About the Founders

Jack Dorsey is mostly famous as he served as the CEO and co-founder of Twitter. He went to New York University but dropped out before graduating. He started working on the idea of Twitter while he was a student at NYU.

Square Inc
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Jim McKelvey and Jack Dorsey

Jim McKelvey is an American billionaire famous for co-founding Square Inc. He went to Washington University at St Louis and after graduating started working as a contractor for IBM.

Tableau Software

Tableau Software – The most Powerful, Secure, and Flexible end-to-end Analytics Platform.

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Tableau Software, the market-leading choice for modern business intelligence, makes it easier for people to explore and manage data, as well as faster to discover and share insights that can change businesses and the world. Everything they do is motivated by their mission of assisting people in seeing and understanding data, which is why their products are designed with the user in mind—whether they are an analyst, data scientist, student, teacher, executive, or business user.

Since their inception, they have consistently invested at an unrivaled rate in research and development, developing solutions to assist anyone working with data in getting answers faster and uncovering unexpected insights.

The Story Behind Tableau Software

Tableau was founded in January 2003 by Pat Hanrahan, Christian Chabot, and Chris Stolte, and relocated its headquarters the following year to Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. Since then, the company has expanded its Fremont headquarters and announced plans for an auxiliary campus in Kirkland, Washington, in 2016. In March 2017, a new headquarters building near Gas Works Park in Wallingford opened, followed by a new building in Fremont in 2018.

Tableau Software
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Tableau announced in August 2016 the appointment of Adam Selipsky as president and CEO, effective September 16, 2016, succeeding co-founder Christian Chabot. Tableau acquired Empirical Systems, an artificial intelligence startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in June 2018, with plans to integrate the company’s technology into the Tableau platform. As a result of the agreement, Tableau plans to open an office in Cambridge.

Some of their Products

Tableau capitalizes on people’s natural ability to recognize visual patterns quickly, revealing both everyday opportunities and eureka moments. With Tableau Server, you can extend the value of your data across your entire organization. Give your company the freedom to explore data in a secure environment, without restricting them to pre-defined questions, wizards, or chart types. Tableau Prep alters the way traditional data preparation is done in an organization.

Tableau Prep makes it easier for analysts and business users to start their analysis faster by providing a visual and direct way to combine, shape, and clean data. Tableau Prep is made up of two products: Tableau Prep Builder, which is used to create data flows, and Tableau Prep Conductor, which is used to schedule, monitor, and manage flows across the organization.

Tableau Online is your cloud-hosted analytics platform. Create dashboards and share your findings with anyone. Invite colleagues or customers to investigate hidden opportunities using interactive visualizations and up-to-date data. All of this is easily accessible via browser or on the go with our mobile apps.

Tableau Public is a free online platform for exploring, creating, and sharing data visualizations. Tableau Public facilitates the development of data skills by providing access to the world’s largest repository of data visualizations.

The Founders of the Company

Tableau’s Chief Scientist is Pat Hanrahan. He also teaches computer graphics as the CANON Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Pat is the recipient of two Academy Awards in Science and Technology, the Spirit of America Creativity Award, the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, the SIGGRAPH Stephen A. Coons Award, and the IEEE Visualization Career Award. He is a National Academy of Engineering and an American Academy of Arts and Sciences member.

Tableau Software
Image Source: incimages.com
Founders: Chris Stolte, Christian Chabot, and Pat Hanrahan

Tableau Software’s Chairman of the Board and Co-Founder is Christian Chabot. Christian previously worked at Softbank Venture Capital, where he specialized in enterprise software. Christian was previously the CEO and co-founder of BeeLine Software, a pioneer in next-generation digital mapping technology that was acquired by VicinityCorporation.

Chris Stolte is a Tableau co-founder who now works as a Technical Advisor for the company. Chris was also the CTO and co-founder of BeeLine Systems, a visualization software company that created a revolutionary map rendering system before being acquired by Vicinity Corporation. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University and his B.S. in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University.

Adam Selipsky, CEO of Tableau Software

Tableau’s former President and CEO is Adam Selipsky. Selipsky spent over a decade developing Amazon Web Services, one of the world’s most successful technology platforms. His leadership aided in the growth of AWS from a start-up to a multibillion-dollar company, establishing it as the undisputed market leader in cloud computing.

Selipsky was AWS’s Vice President of Marketing, Sales, and Support. Prior to joining Amazon, he was a senior executive at RealNetworks, where he oversaw the video subscription and media player divisions. Prior to that, he was a Principal at the strategy consulting firm Mercer Management Consulting. He graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in government and an MBA.

Arista Networks

Arista Networks – An American company Pioneering in Cloud Networking Solutions since 2004

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Arista Networks is famous for providing cognitive cloud networking solutions for large data centers, high-performance computing centers, and high-frequency trading environments. The company is based in Santa Clara, California and it offers a wide range of products and solutions from cloud networking to telemetry and analytics. Andy Bechtolsheim, David Cheriton, and Kenneth Duda co-founded Arista Networks in 2004. The founders came from a background with rich experience in semiconductor and hardware design.

Introduction to Arista Networks

Arista Networks provides a highly efficient networking solution to big data centers as the products include an array of Ethernet speeds from 10 to 400 gigabits per second. The platform of Arista is also made highly secure with CloudVision and Arista EOS (Linux-based network operating system) which is installed in all Arista products. Apart from the highly experienced co-founders of Arista, the current President and CEO of the company is Jayshree Ullal who also has a luminous career history. Arista is very famous around the world for picking up a team of intellectuals who have a rich professional history thus operated by a team of visionaries. The company went public in 2014 and is listed as ANET in NYSE.

Arista Networks
Image Source: fortune.com

Founding History of Arista Networks

As mentioned earlier, all the founders are from an industrial background as they were associated with large enterprises before co-founding Arista Networks. Andy Bechtolsheim co-founded Sun Microsystems back in 1982 and he served as the chief hardware designer of the company. Andy, along with David, co-founded a new company called Granite Systems in 1995 where they started developing Gigabit Ethernet products. After a year, the company was acquired by Cisco Systems. After a few years, Andy and David again opened up a new start-up called Kealia but again it was acquired by Sun Microsystems.

After this acquisition, David and Andy worked at Cisco in executive positions and along with Kennetth Duda. Kennetth Duda was the first employee of Granite Systems and that’s how he met the other two co-founders. They successfully developed a product line for the Cisco company called Catalyst and decided to establish their own company in 2004 which is currently known as Arista Networks. Jayshree Ullal, the current CEO of the company is also an ex-employee of Cisco who worked there for fifteen years. From 2014, there have been several differences followed by filing lawsuits between Cisco and Arista and the latter agreed to $400 million as a part of the settlement.

Customers and Acquisitions

Arista’s customers mainly include big enterprises around the globe that require highly efficient and fast networking platforms. Currently, Arista has many big customers who are in the list of Fortune 500 companies. Arista delivers its products across the data centers and campus with routing and software solutions in order to monitor and be responsive globally. There are around 7,000 customers worldwide served by Arista Networks on a daily basis.

Arista Networks
Image Source: arista.com

Arista Networks have acquired quite a few companies in the last few years. It’s latest acquisition is Awake Security which is a network detection and response platform that uses AI to prevent both internal and external threats. Along with Awake Security, the company also acquired Big Switch Networks last year. This acquisition led to the availability of DANZ Monitoring Fabric, a network observability software across all switching networks of Arista. In 2018, the company acquired Mojo Networks which provides Arista with Wifi solutions for networks across campus and enterprise. Arista also acquired Metamako in 2018 which augments Arista’s low latency platforms.

The Founders of Arista Networks

Andy Bechtolsheim is currently serving as the Chairman and the Chief Development Officer of Arista Networks. Previously, he worked at Sun Microsystems where he was in charge of next generation server, storage, and network architectures. Andy is a computer engineer who went to Carnegie Mellon University and received his doctorate from Stanford University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

After co-founding Arista Networks, David Cheriton co-founded a couple of more companies like Apstra Inc and BrainofT Inc. He received his bachelor’s degree from University of British Columbia and his masters and doctorate from the University of Waterloo. Currently, he is a computer science professor at Stanford University.

Kenneth Duda is the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, Software Engineering at Arista Networks. He also worked as the CTO of There.com where he built a real-time 3D distributed system. Kenneth went to MIT where he graduated in three different engineering courses.

Booz Allen Hamilton

Booz Allen Hamilton – The Pioneers of Consulting and Management Services

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Booz Allen Hamilton is an American consulting agency, which provides management and IT consulting services to its clients. The company headquarters is based in McLean, Virginia, U.S., and was founded in 1914, by Edwin G. Booz, James L. Allen, and Carl L. Hamilton. The company name is after the surnames of three founders. Booz Allen is one of the leading consulting firms in America and has also over 80 offices in different parts of the world, including clients from private-public as well as non-profits sectors.

Booz Allen Hamilton has two divisions that provide IT and management services, i.e., Worldwide Commercial Business and Worldwide Technology Business. The former is for providing management services, and the other is to provide technology consulting and system development services to both private as well as government organizations. Booz Allen & Hamilton Health Care Inc and Booz Allen & Hamilton Acquisition Services are the main subsidiary companies of Booz Allen Hamilton.

The Establishment of Booz Allen Hamilton

The company history dates back to over 100 years ago, in 1914, when a company, named Business Research Service, was founded by Edwin G. Booz to provide consulting services to other companies. Booz wanted to build a business model where companies could hire experts for unbiased advice for their businesses, such that to help them grow even better. The business was recognized as one of its kind. Two years later, two other partners, James L. Allen and Carl L. Hamilton joined the company.

Even at the beginning of the company, it was able to grab clients like Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and Canadian Pacific Railway. For the first thirty years of Business Research Service, it was juggling with a lot of name changes, like Edwin G. Booz, Business Engineering Service, and Business Surveys. George Fry joined the company as the first full-time assistant in 1925 and later, became a partner. In 1936, the company headquarters was moved to Field Building in Chicago. The same year, the company was named Booz, Fry, Allen & Hamilton, but as in 1942, Fry left the company, it became Booz Allen Hamilton.

Booz Allen Hamilton
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In 1940, Booz Allen Hamilton bagged a contract from the U.S. Navy such that the company was to assess the preparedness of the Navy for the second world war in terms of the condition of the Navy’s shipyards, telephone systems, and intelligence operations, etc. By the end of the war, the company had established three offices in the major cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, with around 400 clients on board. Though the war was over, the company continued to offer its services to the US military.

In 1955 Booz Allen Hamilton established the Booz Allen Applied Research, Inc. (BAARINC). The company got recognized as ‘the world’s largest, most prestigious management consulting firm’ by Time magazine in 1959. By this time, IBM, Abbott Labs, and the US Department of the Interior had also become its clients, and the company was making annual revenues worth $55 million.

Booz Allen Hamilton went public in January 1970. In the early 70s, NASA hired the company to evaluate a $100 million satellite to orbit the earth for one year. During the same time, the company also started to work in the telecom and IT field. 1980, the recorded annual revenue for the company was $180 million. To get a hold on the technology market, the company entered the commercial systems integration field in 1989.

By the mid-90s, the company’s operations were restructured and divided into two divisions, i.e., technology services & systems development and commercial management consulting. In 2008, with a spin-off, the commercial arm of Booz Allen Hamilton was separated to form Booz & Company, which later was acquired by PwC. The company had another round of IPO in 2010. By 2020, the company also became the SEC’s major cybersecurity services provider.

International Expansion and Acquisitions

In 1953, the company went international after Booz Allen Hamilton bagged a contract from the Philippines and the Egyptian government. During the same time, the company also opened its office in Italy. The company made some acquisitions like Designers for Industry (renamed Design & Development) and Foster D. Snell Laboratory in the early 60s.

By the end of the 60s, the company had also started to work with several European industries, including the British heavy industry and consumer goods manufacturers and West German and Scandinavian steel producers. During the same time, the company was also actively working with the governments of Brazil, Argentina, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia as well as Venezuela.

In 1972, Booz Allen Hamilton entered the Japanese industry. The company acquired Advanced Decision Systems Inc in 1991, and in 2012, it acquired the Defense Systems Engineering & Support division of ARINC, followed by the acquisition of Epidemico in 2014, S.C. technology firm SPARC in 2015, and eGov Holding in 2017.

The Founder: Edwin George Booz

Edwin George Booz is recognized as the founder of Booz Allen Hamilton as he was the first one to start the company. He was born on 2 September 1887 in Reading, Pennsylvania. He completed a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in psychology from Kellogg School at Northwestern University. As soon he completed his education, he started Business Research Service in 1914.

Supermicro

Supermicro – The Company Seeking Innovation for its Customers.

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The arrival of personal computers helped IT technology grow at a faster pace. With having computers at home, people were more interested in learning about IT and upcoming related technologies. It also helped many budding entrepreneurs to try their hands on business apart from the traditional trades and grow along with the IT industry. Supermicro ( aka Super Micro Computer Inc) is one such company that started when the personal computer was becoming a thing, and today, after 28 years long journey, the company is one of the largest IT company in the world.

Supermicro as the Market Leader

Supermicro is a 28 years old American information technology company founded by Charles Liang, Wally Liaw, and Sara Liu in 1993. The company headquarter is located in San Jose, California. Supermicro is a public company and trades on Nasdaq as SMCI. Charles Liang, the founder of Supermicro is heading the company as the president and the CEO.

As per 2017 records, Supermicro made revenues worth $2.53 billion and has been listed among the world’s 100 largest US publicly traded companies by Fortune Magazine. Supermicro is known for its services in computer servers, storage, networking devices, server management software as well as a high-end workstation for enterprise IT and embedded markets.

The Founding of Supermicro

Supermicro was founded by Charles Liang, Wally Liaw, and Sara Liu in 1993, at a time when companies like Oracle, Dell, and IBM were already dominating the market. The founders established the company intending to bring innovative technology to the customers at lower prices, and it still follows the same goal. According to CEO Liang, the company has a strong engineering background that makes it bring the newest and advanced technology before its rivals.

The company has a history of gradual growth since its inception. The company introduced the Pentium® Pro-based products in 1994, which immediately became popular among most North American companies. The next year, Supermicro introduced the world’s first x86 DP server boards based on Orion chipset. The success and increased demand for Supermicro’s products helped it establish a new manufacturing facility in Taiwan in 1996. It also developed the world’s first 20 ready server board named COMDEX in the same year.

Supermicro
Image Source: en.m.wikipedia.org

Few of the next first in the industry from Supermicro includes the server boards supporting both Intel® Pentium® Pro and Pentium® II processors, Xeon® Pentium® II server solution, 533MHz FSB rackmount server system, 64-bit 1U Itanium2 platform, and first 1U server with 1 Terabyte of SATA storage and patent for industry’s first redundant cooling power supply, etc.

In 1998, Supermicro went on to establish its European subsidiary in the Netherlands. The company had its first IPO in 2007 and went public on NASDAQ under the symbol SMCI. Supermicro won the Blade Systems Insight 2010 Award for Best Blade-Based Solution in 2010. With exceeding $1B in revenues in 2012, Supermicro became a unicorn company, and in September 2014, Supermicro moved its headquarters to the former Mercury News headquarters in North San Jose, California, and named the campus Supermicro Green Computing Park. The revenues were double in 2016, and Fortune Magazine named Supermicro the World’s Fastest Growing IT Infrastructure Company. In 2018, Supermicro was the 3rd largest server systems supplier in the world.

Today, Supermicro is actively offering its services to major IT companies in the world and specializes mainly in AI and HPC, Enterprise Applications and Data Analytics, Data Management, Cloud and Virtualization, 5G, Edge Computing and IoT as well as Hyperscale Infrastructure.

The CEO, Charles Liang

Charles Liang belongs to the Taiwanese ethnicity. He was born and brought up in Taiwan and completed B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the National Taiwan University of Science & Technology. Later, he moved to to the US and earned a master’s degree in the same subject from the University of Texas at Arlington.

After completing his higher education, Liang joined the Suntek Information International Group, and in January 1988, moved to Chips & Technologies, where he worked as Senior Design Engineer and Project Leader. He also worked as the President and Chief Design Engineer of Micro Center Computer Inc. for two years, before he founded Supermicro in 1993. He has been serving the company as the president and the CEO since the inception of the company.