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citrix

Citrix Systems: Architectural Designer And Virtualization Pioneer Ed Lacobucci’s Dream Company

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A multinational software company well-known as Citrix Systems enabled the best service in cloud computing, networking, and SaaS. Also, it offers services like desktop virtualization, networking, and many more. Ed Lacobucci is known as the virtualization pioneer set up the firm back in 1989. Today, 40000+ clients all over the world use Citrix System’s solutions. However, almost 99 percent of clients of the fortune 100, and 98 percent of fortune 500. Let’s see how the company acquired huge success in the IT world.

The Backstory

In 1989, Ed lacobucci a former developer at IBM set up Critix with USD 3 Million investment. Previously, the company headquartered in Texas. However, later on, he shifted the company to Coral Springs in Florida. Only five IBM teammates of Ed joined the company initially. As a matter of fact, earlier it recognized as Citrus. But it renamed Citrix after another firm with the same name as Citrus claimed trademark rights. In the starting days of the company, Roger Roberts served as CEO. After that, Ed Iacobucci took the position and served until he diminished.

Citrix Boomed as an Industrial leader

Basically, the company started production with a remote access product for Microsoft OS. Citrix Multiuser an OS/2 extension was its the first product. Since then Microsoft had a partnership with Citrix System. Soon, the company started building purpose-built devices and remarked the beginning as an industrial leader in thin client technology.

Thereafter, the firm acquired Sequoia Corporation as well as ExpertCity in 2001 and 2003 respectively. In fact, in a short period, it acquired several other companies. These acquisitions benefit the firm to expand the services further. Growth continues further and the result into a multi-user operating system launch called WinFrame. It is based on Microsoft’s Windows NT and it was the first thin client for Windows. 

Also read: Story of Lee Byung-Chul- Founder of Samsung

Ed Iacobucci- Citrix’s Founder

He was born in Argentina on 26 September 1953. However, Ed went to Georgia Tech to study systems engineering. In 1979, he started his career at IBM. At the start, he worked in architecture and design-related posts where most of the work is involved with PC OS/2. In short duration, Ed became CTO of a networking job there. Very few know that Ed shares a great contribution to IBM’s development systems’ Network Architecture. Also, he was highly involved in the NetView net management technology. 

The journey to start Citrix

Ed worked with IBM for a long time. After serving almost ten years at the same firm, he also got a job offer from Microsoft. Yes, in 1989, Ed had the chance to become a chief technical officer at Microsoft’s networking group. But as per his belief that every person has own belief about the future, Ed also had some different ideas. So, he left the job as well as refused a job proposal and plunged into entrepreneurship to start Citrix.  

Initially, it was a little bit difficult to start the actual working of the company. It took almost two years two create its first product. After that, under Ed Lacobucci’s guidance, the company never looked back. In 1997, Microsoft-Citrix signed a joint agreement related to multi-user capabilities in Microsoft’s Windows NT server. 

Awards and Recognition

He received the Ernst & Young “International Entrepreneur of the Year” award in 1998. Also, Ed served as a technology judge at the state and national level for the Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year Awards”.

Later Life

Ed Iacobucci had a great contribution to building the strong foundation of Citrix. Apart from that, he assisted in the DayJet Corporation’s establishment in 2002. DayJet was known for on-demand optimization technology to make jet travel affordable and accessible. Unfortunately, in 2008, the company had folded due to some reasons. Thereafter, Ed also helped in the VirtualWorks foundation in 2009. But due to the degrading health situation, he had to resign his position at VirtualWorks.

Iacobucci died on 21 June 2013 due to cancer at his home in Florida.

Wepay

Wepay: Enabling Payment Solution With Secure, Frictionless, And Customized Service!

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E-commerce is rising exponentially day by day; in turn, the need for online payment platforms is rising with it. However, this platform needs to be feasible and reliable too. WePay is one of the online payment service providers that enabled payment solutions that are integrated and customizable. As well, feasible and reliable to the customers. The company, however, provides an API based payment platform for marketplaces, crowdfunding sites, and small software companies. The best thing about WePay that it offers fraud-free payment solutions. Rich Aberman and Bill Clerico set up the company back in 2008. However, it headquartered in Redwood city of California.

About WePay

It is a trustworthy payment solution platform for its secure, frictionless, and customized service in this field. As the company is incorporated with several third-party vendors, risk and fraud protection is possible through the WePay payment platform. However, for detecting fraud and other user security issues, the company uses several techniques. Includes, machine learning algorithms, social data connections and many more.

According to the founders of WePay, the company’s corporate values are core to what it is and how it operates each and every day. Also, WePay base on the belief that a company’s success is the measure of its customer success. 

The Backstory

Every company has some background and reasons after its establishment and here with the WePay too. The story begins during the Rich Abreman’s brother’s bachelor party arrangement. For that, he was collecting funds from friends which were spread across the US. At that time, he faced so many difficulties to collect money from various sources that are completely different. Like some were offering cash, some offered checks while some of them offered PayPal Money transfer. He found all this process much time consuming as well as burdensome. Eventually, after so much struggle party goes well, but Abreman studied and understood the PayPal weaknesses. After this, he asked Clerico to assist him in setting up WePay. 

Thus, in 2008, they founded WePay in Boston. However, it was the time when social media and smartphones were popped. 

WePay Growth and Involvement

After one year, the company attracted interest from third-party developers. Especially those who were looking for an API to facilitate a simple payments approach on their platforms. In 2010, WePay introduced the first platform API that supports as well as monetize payments. Soon company collaborated with GoFundMe a crowdfunding platform. With it, WePay initiated the development of better UX. Also, the company enabled Embedded payments in 2012. To prevent and identify merchant fraud, WePay took the next step and introduced an intelligent risk engine. Additionally, the company introduced mobile card readers that are pre-certified. 

As per the mission and vision of the company, it continually improves its payment platform and growing impeccably. JP Morgan Chase acquired the company in 2017.

Masterminds behind WePay

Bill Clerico

He is the Co-founder & WePay CEO. His policies helped WePay a lot in its growth. Apart from that, Bill is an angel investor of WePay. Before that, he was an advisor plus investor at Insight Data Science. Also, he served as a part-time partner at Y Combinator. Coming to the educational background, Bill attended Boston College to study Computer Science. Clerico also went to the High Technology High School to study pre-Engineering, Math, Science as well as Cisco Networking.

Rich Aberman

The company is the result of Rich’s idea and will to enable an easier payment solution platform. He is the WePay co-founders and presently serving as a CSO of the company. Aberman is the person behind popularizing the WePay product strategy. As well, he is the frequent speaker at fintech conference where he mostly spoke on payments and innovations. However, he holds a degree in Bachelor of Arts. For that, he went to Boston College and studied Political science, Economics, and Philosophy. 

Other Social Works of WePay

Apart from enabling fraud and risk-free payment platforms, the company works for many social clauses. The company supported fundraising efforts for many disaster relief campaigns as well as several humanitarian causes. For example, WePay assisted the campaigns that are related to Hurricane Sandy, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Earthquakes in Nepal, etc.

Bottom Line

They believe in the quality of work and working to deliver excellent service since its foundation. Recently, the company announced a product line of Link, Clear, and Core. So that the integrated payments use cases can be solved. Also, it adds key JPMorgan Chase services for the incremental value.

Deepnote

Jakub Jurových: Young Entrepreneur to set up Deepnote and to set name in list 30 under 30 of Forbes

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Data science is most popular for solving many business problems. In fact, it is capable of doing more than that. Also, Data Science is useful to humans in the decision-making process. With it, one can make better as well as quicker decisions. So, all must aware of these basic features of Data Science. However, the growing importance of data science generates opportunities to develop many projects in this field. Deepnote is one of them, we can call it as a simpler notebook of data science. Jakub Jurových set up Deepnote in 2019.

What is Deepnote?

As said earlier, we can call the company Deepnote as a data science notebook. Its purpose to build was to make data science teams more productive. Headquarters of Deepnote is at Prague, Czech Republic.

The special part about Deepnote is that one can use it across any platform. For example, one can use it for browser across platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. Also, it is Jupyter-compatible and allows for real-time collaboration. As well, the easy deployment of a Deepnote is possible. Additionally, for any updates from the developer side, no downloads are required. All the changes are saved automatically and instantly.

How does it work?

One can create a project in Deepnote. For that, several options are available. Like, you can either import the GitHub project or can upload own files. One more option to deal with this is one can create an empty project. However, these Deepnote projects consisted of data, code, and all runs in one environment. These projects can also share with other collaborators similar to Google Docs.

The Backstory of Foundation

A data scientist, Jakub Jurových was known to the fact that data science is not a cakewalk. As well, tools available for this are not easy either. While, also being an engineer, he always wanted that data science project codes should be scalable as well as easy. However, to make this happen a powerful and easy tool is a must. Such a tool is efficient as well as simple to use. Also, it should be scalable with a growing data science team. And that’s how the concept of Deepnote sparked into the mind of founders. Finally, in 2019 Jakub Jurových with his team build the Deepnote.

Features of Deepnote

With Deepnote one can see the internal state of the program. Also, it offers various explorer as well as various interactive plots. Such as code intelligence, command palette and shortcuts, APIs and more. 

Furthermore, one need not compromise with their existing infrastructure and the workflow they like. Because Deepnote integrates with those too. It offers integration with GitHub and GitLab, GSC buckets and Amazon S3. Also, the Deepnote team is planning to offer integration of Spark, PostgreSQL connection, MongoDB in the future.

Glimpse to Founder Life- Jakub Jurových

Early life and Education

He is hailed from Zvoleno, Slovakia. However, Jakub attended the University of Cambridge where he studied MPhil in advanced computer science. Also, he went to Masaryk University Brno for graduation in computer science. In fact, he received Dean’s award for his Bachelor thesis. So, the subject was Techniques for JavaScript debugging.

Career

He founded Deepnote in 2019. Earlier, he worked as a CTO at Operam, Inc for over 2 years. Also, he served as CTO at Unite Inc since 2014-2016. However, in 2019, he was an advisor at Operam, INC. As a matter of fact, Operam inc is a well-known firm that assists to promote several Hollywood films. But he shortly left that job and plunge into entrepreneurship. Apart from this, Jakub also helped in establishing Hack Cambridge. 

Awards and Recognition

Forbs Magazine included Jakub Jurových’s name on the list of 30 Under 30. Apart from this, he is trained in four languages including English, French, Slovak, and Czech. Also, achieving all this success at the age of 24 is a great achievement of Jakub.

Bottom Line

The success came to Jakub is a result of his focus and organised efforts. However, the foundation of Deepnote is the outcome of his optimistic view about the future of Data Science. Though Deepnote is a new company, it is thriving impeccably and will hopefully deliver the best service for the data science community in the future. Jurových is not yet 25 years old and still, he achieved so much in a short duration. Today, he is an inspiration for many new start-up founders.

Mobile World Congress 2020

Amazon and Sony denied participation in Mobile World Congress 2020 due to Coronavirus Outbreak

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Highlights

Mobile World Congress 2020 is the biggest mobile technology trade show, scheduled on 24-27 Feb in Barcelona, Spain.

Earlier, Nvidia, LG, ZTE, and Ericsson have already step back from the event. Now, Amazon and Sony pull out of 2020 Mobile Congress.

These companies cancel their presence due to Global Emergency i.e. Coronavirus outbreak all over the world.

Mobile World Congress 2020

Mobile World Congress 2020 will be taking place this month in between 24-27 Feb. However, this year the MWC is organized in Barcelona, Spain. In fact, it is the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry, organized by the GSM Association. It is also famous for conferences held by prominent executives of the mobile industry.  

Why Sony and Amazon step back from the Event?

Earlier, LG, ZTE, Ericsson, and Nvidia already step back from the various events at Mobile World Congress. However, Sony and Amazon also set their name on the list of companies to denied participating in the event. It is said that the Coronavirus outbreak is the reason behind this. 

Recently, Sony posted on its website, “Sony has been closely monitoring the evolving situation following the novel coronavirus outbreak, which was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization on January 30th, 2020”. Also, it added, “As we place the utmost importance on the safety and wellbeing of our customers, partners, media, and employees, we have taken the difficult decision to withdraw from exhibiting and participating at MWC 2020 in Barcelona, Spain”.

Amazon higher authorities reported that “Due to the outbreak and continued concerns about novel coronavirus, Amazon will withdraw from exhibiting and participating in Mobile World Congress 2020, scheduled for Feb. 24-27 in Barcelona, Spain”.

Previous History of Amazon and Sony at Mobile World Congress

As we see back, Sony often uses MWC as a platform to showcase its most important mobile devices. In fact, last year, Sony revealed its Xperia 1 flagship phone at the show. “But this year, we will instead make its announcements online through its Xperia YouTube channel”, said Sony. 

However, Amazon has not visited the event that often in history; neither presented its devices at MWC. 

Coronavirus Safety Measures at MWC

Yesterday, the GSM Association, which organizes MWC reported about the steps to be taken to avoid the spread of the coronavirus further. “No travelers from China’s Hubei province, where the outbreak began, will be permitted access to the event, while anyone who’s visited other regions of China will need to prove that they have been out of the country for 14 days beforehand”, said GSM Association. Further, it added, “With MWC set to start in two weeks today, that is likely to complicate the plans of several Chinese companies that were planning to attend”.

IRobot

Irobot: American Advanced Technology Company Founded By Three of Mit’s Ai Lab Members

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iRobot is an American advanced technology company. Three of MIT’s AI lab members set up the company in 1990. It has been working in robot design for space exploration as well as military defense. Also, the company creates a wide range of consumer robots that can perform both outside and inside works of home. For example, its robots Roomba and Braava. These are robots as a vacuum cleaner and floor moppers respectively. 

After serving at MIT’s AI lab, H. Greiner, R. Brooks, and C. Angle set up the company in 1990. 

iRobot 

It is an American advanced tech company that works in the field of Robotics. However, the company started the development of PackBot in 1998. Just after receiving the DARPA research contract. In 2002, iRobot started designing home robots. As of the year 2004, its home robot the Roomba sold a million units. Also, in 2005, the company began being traded on the NASDAQ. Until the year 2012, the company sold 8+ million home robots. Additionally, it has deployed more than 5000 defense & security robots. 

Best Home Robots

iRobot designing home robots since 2002. Roomba, Braava, Create, Mirra, and Terra are well-known and mostly sold robots of the company. The robots Roomba and Brava operate as an automated vacuum cleaning robot and floor mopping robot respectively. However, the company’s robot Create is designed as a hobby robot. Mirra is designed to clean swimming pool floors, while Terra is designed for mowing the lawn using mapping.

Founders of iRobots

Colin M. Angle

He is the CEO and iRobots co-founder. Under Colin’s policies, the company is at the leading robot enterprise. Also, he showed the world an example of team empowerment and innovation to deliver market-friendly robots. In addition, under his guidance, the company has built a strategic network with many companies like Boeing, Clorox, etc. Together, these companies are delivering new and innovative robot solutions.

Education 

Colin Angle is an honorable student at MIT. He holds a tech bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering as well as a master’s degree in computer science. During his master’s, Angle’s thesis assisted to produce a six-legged autonomous walking robot called Genghis. Presently, it is at Smithsonian National Air and Science Museum, Washington D.C. 

Career

In 1990, he was Artificial Creatures’ president. Also, he worked at the AI Laboratory of MIT. At that time, he first met Helen Greiner and Dr. Rodney Brooks. Later, they turned as partners in the foundation of iRobot. Earlier, just after the formation of iRobot, Colin and his team worked for NASA. For NASA, they designed behavior-controlled rovers. In fact, the team won the NASA Group Achievement award. As well, the Angles name is inscribed on the spirit case of the Mars exploration rover. 

Awards and Recognition 

Colin M. Angle has been honored with numerous professional awards. Also, the Mass Technology Leadership Council honored him as CEO of the year. He marked the name in the list of Best Bosses, the list declared by Fortune Small Business Magazine. Besides, Ernst and young honored him New England Entrepreneur of the year. 

Helen Greiner

She is iRobot co-founder and teammate of Rodney Brooks and Colin Angle at MIT AI Lab. Also, she served as CTO of Aria Insights. 

Early life 

She was born in 1967 in London. At the age of five, Helen’s family shifted to Southampton, New York, USA. Helen decided to work with robots when she was ten-year-old. It was the Star-War movie that inspired her.

Education

Helen is a Mechanical engineer studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, she earned a Master’s in computer science. Apart from that, Greiner holds an honorary degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Clarkson University. 

Achievement

At iRobot she assisted in designing the first-ever version of iRobot called Roomba. However, she served as chairman of the company until 2008. Also, she served as an iRobot president until 2004. Under her guidance, the company released a PackBot, Roomba and military robot called SUGV.

Other Achievements 

Helen served the United States Army as an advisor in Logistic and Technology. Also, she affirmed as highly qualified Expert for Robotics, Autonomous Systems & AI for the Army.

Awards and recognition

In 2000, the World Economic Forum honored her as one of the Global leaders. Also, she named Ernst and Young New England Entrepreneur of the year. Helen also set the name in Fortune Magazine list of “Top Ten Innovators”. She also awarded as Entrepreneur of the Year by Good Housekeeping. Furthermore, she honored as one of America’s best leaders by Kennedy School at Harvard. Apart from that, she had been honored with many such awards and titles. Recently, in 2018, Wentworth Institute of Technology awarded her as “Women of the Year”.

Rodney Brooks

He is an Entrepreneur and co-founder of robotics companies iRobot and Rethinks Robotics. Presently, he is the Rethink Robotics CTO and Chairman. Brooks also served at MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. 

Education

He studied at Flinders University in Pure Maths. Also, he has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford. At Carnegie Mellon and MIT, he held research positions. Brooks has published many papers in computer vision as well as in artificial intelligence and robotics.

He also served as a member of the International Scientific Advisory Group of National Information & Communication Technology, Australia. Presently, Rodney is serving at Xconomy.

Awards and Recognition

In 1991, Brookes won the Computers and Thought Award at the Int Joint Conf on Artificial Intelligence. Apart from that, he worked as the Cray Lecturer at the University of Minnesota. Also, the Mellon Lecturer at Dartmouth as well as Forsythe Lecturer at Stanford. Brookes works actively in Artificial Intelligence. Additionally, he appeared in the movie called “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control” in 1997. That movie was named for one of Brookes’s scientific papers.

SAP SE

SAP SE – Inspiring Journey of the Company That Emerged Out Of Rejection

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It’s a tough task to manage the financials, logistics, HR and other business areas without the help of technological tools, especially for bigger companies. Such tools bring accuracy as well as transparency in the organization. The combination of various business processes is achieved through it. One of such Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is SAP SE.

SAP SE journey – a very basic version of the most celebrated software as per fortune 500 companies

In 1971, Xerox left the hardware manufacturing sector and asked IBM to shift its business systems to IBM technologies. That time five IBM engineers from the AI department were working on enterprise-wide systems based on the software to which IBM has given rights to, Scientific data systems (SDS) /SAPE software. They were told that the project they are working on is not of use. That time, they decided to leave IBM and start their own company.

So, in 1972, those 5 engineers – Dietmar Hopp, Hasso Plattner, Hans-Werner Hector, Klaus Tschira, and Claus Wellenreuther founded SAP SE. currently, their headquarter is located in Walldorf, Germany and regional offices all over the world in 170 plus countries with more than 425000 customers.

Further Exploration of SAP SE

In the beginning, they developed programs for payroll and office for their first client Imperial chemical industries. Their software was real-time, unlike IBM.

In 1973, they moved to a commercial product which was their first financial accounting system. (SAP R/1) It has centralized data storage and improved data maintenance. In 1979, SAP involved other areas like material management & production planning. (SAP R/2). This SAP R/2 version did not improve until 1990.  SAP R/3 was released in 1992 and was developed with new features in 1995.

By this time, it already achieved the mainframe computing trend and the concept of business process integration came into the picture. To accommodate all these changes, SAP R/3 was replaced with SAP ERP central component in 2004. The latest version is of 2016, SAP ERP 6.0. Till 2016, SAP was the world’s third-largest software and programming company. As per recent reports, it is on number one. Most of the fortune 500 companies use this software.

Five Co-founders, One Dream

The five founders have different stories before they were in IBM and have different journeys with SAP. Let’s have a short introduction to the life of masterminds behind SAP SE.

Dietmar Hopp

Starting with Dietmar Hopp, who grew up in Hoffenheim. He was a telecommunications engineering student and after that, he joined as a consultant at IBM. Then SAP was founded, and he was the CEO of SAP SE from 1988 until 1998, chairman of its supervisory board from 1998 until 2003 and member of the board from 2003 until 2005. When he left the board, he kept 10% of the company’s shares.

Hasso Plattner

Plattner has received many awards and recognitions for his commitment to economics and science ranging from Leadership Award for Global Integration to the “technology guru”. He was also estimated to be worth US$10.8 billion by Forbes in 2016.

Klaus Tschira

He got his Diploma in physics and worked at IBM before he founded this company, for which he was a board member From 1998 to 2007. He passed away on 31 March 2015 in Heidelberg. As well, he was a recipient of many honors in his lifetime including several doctorates.

Claus Wellenreuther

Wellenreuther studied business administration at the University of Manheim in operational research. He left the business in 1980 due to his health condition and got compensation of 1 million DM.

Hector

One of the founders, Hector, A trained mathematician successfully built up the North American market for SAP. Later, he was separated from the company in 1997 after a falling out with his partners.

CEO till 2019 – William R. “Bill” McDermott

Formerly William R. “Bill” McDermott was the CEO of SAP who is currently CEO of ServiceNow.  While he was the co-CEO and CEO, SAP’s market value increased from $39 billion to $156 billion. McDermott went to North-western University’s Kellogg School of Management where he earned his MBA. He joined SAP in 2002 as CEO and was designated to the SAP Executive Board in 2008. He did various roles in SAP.  On October 10, 2019, McDermott decided to leave SAP SE. In 2016, McDermott was named “Manager of the Year” by the German Business Daily. He also received the award as TOP CEO by Glassdoor.

Current Co-CEOs – Christian Klein & Jennifer Morgan

Presently, the duo Klein-Morgan handling the CEO position of the firm. Starting from Jennifer Morgan, she joined this company back in 2004. After serving for a long time, in 2017, she appointed in SAP’s Executive Board. However, she became the first female in America that first-ever appointed to the Executive Board. While Klein, the Co-CEO joined the company in 1999 as an intern. Thereafter serving at several positions he named as a CEO along with Jennifer.