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Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric – The Biggest Sustainable Electric Equipment Manufactures.

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Schneider Electric is a well-known electrical equipment development company, serving all over the world. The company has been there in the industry for the past 185 years and taking its legacy to another level with its excellence. Along with providing the best electric products, the company keeps sustainability in mind and curates its products based on that. From homes to data centers and from real-time automation to software, Schneider Electric has covered it all. The company is operational in over a hundred countries with more than twenty subsidiaries and 20,000 patents registered. It is a publically traded company that has also registered its name under the Fortune Global 500 list.

About the Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric SA is a French electric company, founded back in 1836. Its headquarters is in Rueil-Malmaison, France, and offers its services to its worldwide customers having its offices and manufacturing plants established in over a hundred countries. Schneider Electric has over 135,000 people working for it, in more than twenty subsidiaries, such as Luminous Power Technologies Pvt. Ltd., APC, Areva T&D, Federal Pioneer, TAC, and Zicom, etc. As per 2019 records, the company made revenue worth €27.2 billion and holds assets worth €45 billion. Schneider Electric energy and automation digital solutions, such as building automation, home automation, electric power distribution, industrial safety services, etc.

Schneider Electric
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The Beginning and Growth

Schneider brothers Eugène Schneider and Adolphe Schneider acquired mines and forges at Le Creusot, France, to establish a steel and machinery factory in 1936. After two years, the founders named their company Schneider & Cie, which later became one of the leading steel companies in the area and remained in that position for the next 50 years. In 1891, Schneider started to invest in the electricity business, as it was one of the emerging fields of that time. The new business started to grow rapidly, and in 1919, Schneider started its international expansion entering Germany and Eastern Europe.
Like every other big company, the two world wars were very crucial for Schneider. As soon as the second world war ended, Schneider started to grow at an even faster pace. In 1949, the company decided to restructure its operations and planned multiple acquisitions. In 1975, the company acquired a share in one of the biggest electric equipment manufacturing companies of France named Merlin Gerin. In the next two decades, it went on to acquire names like Télémécanique (1988), Square D (1991), and Lexel (1999). In May 1999, the company was renamed Schneider Electric from its century-old name Schneider & Cie.
In the year 2000, Schneider Electric moved its headquarters to Rueil-Malmaison, France. During the same time, it established the Schneider Electric Foundation, an organization to spread awareness about sustainability and emerging economics. In 2010, the company started to invest in software, critical power and grid applications. Schneider also introduced a new program named Life is On that promoted sustainability and efficiency. The same year, Schneider Electric also established a venture capital firm to support new startups.
In 2014, the company partnered with the German power supplier RWE, and in the next year, it introduced EcoStruxure, an IoT-enabled architecture. Its acquisition of British retail brand Tower Electric in 2016 helped it strengthen its position in Europe. In 2019, the company launched a cross-industry digital ecosystem named Scheider Electric Exchange. The next year, it acquired companies like RIB Software and ProLeiT AG. The same year it introduced smart equipment for better electricity distribution, specifically for Nigeria.

The CEO at Schneider Electric

Jean-Pascal Tricoire, a renowned Fench businessman is the current CEO and the chairman of Schneider Electric. He was born on 11 May 1963 in Beaupréau, France. Tricoire is an Electronic engineering graduate and holds an MBA from EM LYON Business School. Before joining Schneider, he has worked with multiple famous companies.
Tricoire started his career at Alcatel, Schlumberger and joined Saint-Gobain afterwards. In 1986, he was working at Merlin Gerin. As in 1992, Schneider took over the company, he became a part of the company too. After working in different branches of Schneider Electric in Italy, China and South Africa, he was appointed as the Head of Schneider Electric’s Global Strategic Accounts. In January 2002, he became the Vice President of the International Division of the company, and in October 2003, he was announced the Deputy CEO and COO of Schneider Electric. Finally, in 2006, he was promoted to be the CEO of Schneider Electric SA.

Software AG

Software AG – Story of One of the Largest Enterprise Software Company in Germany.

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Software AG is a German-based enterprise software company founded in 1969. The company was founded by six young enthusiastic employees of a consulting firm called AIV. The headquarters of the company is based in Darmstadt, Germany. Software AG has more than 10,000 enterprise customers spread across 70 countries. In India, the company has offices in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad. The strongest and broadest market of the company is in Europe with several subsidiaries and offices.

The main products of the company are digital transformation and internet of things software, integration and API management, and business analytics. Around 50 percent of the total Fortune 500 companies use the software of this company. Software AG is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and is the seventh-largest software company in Europe.

Origin of Software AG

In 1969, six employers of AIV decided to establish Software AG and help other enterprises with their business management by harnessing the power of tech. One of the team members was the famous mathematician Peter Schnell who later became the Chairman of the board. After two years, the first product of the company, ADABAS was launched. This product was a very high functional database management system (DBMS). Peter Page was also one of the co-founders of the company that launched Natural in 1979.

After the first product of the company rolled out in the market, the company started opening other offices in different regions. This includes North America in 1971 followed by Japan, UK, France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, and Saudi Arabia. By 1987, the company had a total of 500 employees working across 50 countries. In 1999, the company became a publicly-traded enterprise and after getting listed in the Frankfurt Stock Exchange released two new products, Tamino Information Server and Tamino XML Server.

Software AG
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Expansion and Acquisitions

Software AG eventually started acquiring many companies and expanded into newer markets both tech-wise and geographically. In 2005, the company acquired Israeli-based legacy integration vendor Sabratech Ltd followed by SPL Software in March 2007. The same year, Software AG also bought a company called Jacada which was the foundation of AG’s R&D in Israel. The company also acquired one of its rivals in the US market, webMethods for $546 million. And, after this acquisition, Software AG became a leading company in the business process management sector. It also became a leader of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) product domain.

In 2009, Software AG acquired a German-based company called IDS Scheer which fully became a part of the Company in 2010. The company also bought a leading company of master data management, Data Foundations in October 2010. Next, Software AG strategically acquired companies that provided cloud services and mobile applications. For example, it acquired Terracotta Inc which was a leading provider of in-memory technology for both high-performing applications and cloud services. It also acquired Metismo Ltd which was known for building a very flexible and versatile platform that helped to build device-independent mobile applications. In April 2012, Software AG acquired a British company called My-Channels which helped it gain access to universal messaging technology.

Next, in 2013, Software AG acquired many companies. First, it acquired a US-based company called LongJump which was a cloud platform provider followed by a leading software provider called Alfabet. Alfabet specialized in “enterprise architecture” and “IT Portfolio Management” which broadened the IT landscape of the company. The same year, the company also invested in a mobile software company called Metaquark. In recent years, some of its acquisitions include CONNX Solution, Zementis, Cumulocity, Trendminer, and Built.io. The company’s last acquisition was in November 2018.

Sanjay Brahmawar – CEO of Software AG

Sanjay Brahmawar is an Indian-Belgium software and business executive. He was born in India and pursued his studies at Delhi College of Engineering and MBA from the University of Leeds. In 2003, he started his career at IBM and worked for several roles. Before he left IBM, he was the general manager for global revenue at IBM’s Watson IoT. In 2018, he joined Software AG as the CEO.

TIBCO Software

TIBCO Software – A US-based Private Company Pioneering Software Development For Enterprises.

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Vivek Ranadive, an Indian American businessman, founded TIBCO software in 1997. The company is based in Palo Alto, California, US. TIBCO Software has expanded its services and consumer market overseas over time which includes North and South America, Europe, Asia, Middle East, and Africa. The company focuses on building real-time software for other businesses which serves the purpose of business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and business-to-employee data transfer. Some of the leading products of TIBCO used by enterprises around the world are TIBCO ActiveSpaces, TIBCO BusinessEvents, TIBCO Data Virtualization, TIBCO Messaging, and many more. Currently, TIBCO Software is owned by Vista Equity Partners and Dan Streetman is serving as the CEO of the company.

Foundation of TIBCO Software

Vivek Ranadive is also known as the founder of Teknekron Software Systems Inc and it was after he sold this business, TIBCO was founded. In 1997, TIBCO Software was established which was then known as the Information Bus Company. The company was founded as a subsidiary of a new firm called Reuters Holdings which was backed by Cisco Systems. The software developed by TIBCO was used by businesses to make real-time communications within the financial market without any human intervention. This product caught the attention of many big companies like Oracle, SAP, and IBM and they also started using it. The same year, TIBCO became one of the thirteen partners for Microsoft’s “push technology” which was aimed to deliver free internet content to users through web browsers.

In 1999, the company filed for its first IPO and started trading as a public company in July of the same year. On the first day of its trading, the share value of the company doubled, and in early 2000 went even higher. The company became very famous in 2000 as Yahoo! Launched Corporate Yahoo, a platform built using TIBCO’s software. This platform helped companies to establish communications between computers in a customized way which added points to its flexibility. It was only one year after TIBCO became a public company, the economic depression started.

TIBCO Software
Image source: www.tibco.com

Post-dot-com Bubble Scenario

TIBCO Software managed to stay intact during the dot-com bust and even after the boom it was one of the 50 relevant technology companies according to USA Today’s e-Consumer and e-Business Index. The total market capitalization of TIBCO approached $2 billion during the first two quarters of 2001. In 2002, TIBCO Software formed an alliance with an American business company called Verity Inc. Both the companies came together to integrate TIBCO Active Portal 4.0 with Verity K2 Developer technology in order to meet the needs of customers in a better way.

In 2003, a lot of well-established companies like Vodafone and Reliance Communications started using TIBCO’s software. Delta Air Lines used the software as well for organizing its operating system Deutsche Bahn used the software to construct a network of digital integrated train stations. After a few years, Apple also started using the same software to process user requests and facilitate sales in the iPhone division. In 2011, the total annual revenue of the company summed up to $920 million and soon it crossed the $1 billion mark in 2012. In 2014, TIBCO was acquired by the private equity firm called Vista Equity Partners for $4.3 billion and Murray Rode was made the CEO of the company. But, it was again in 2019 that he was replaced by Dan Streetman while Rode took the place of Vice Chairman.

About The Founder

Apart from being an Indian American businessman, Vivek Ranadive is also an engineer by profession, an author, speaker, and philanthropist. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, Vivek was accepted in MIT from where he graduated as an engineer. Later, he went to Harvard Business School and obtained his MBA. Vivek was able to found TIBCO Software with sufficient funding from Reuters and Cisco Systems. A few years ago, he founded a startup investment firm called Bow Capital.

Nuance Communications

Nuance Communications – A Leading American Company Developing Speech Recognition Software.

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Nuance is an American-based multinational software company that is well-known for speech recognition and artificial intelligence software. The company’s headquarters is based in Burlington, Massachusetts. Nuance Communications was originally founded in 1992 which was then incorporated as Visioneer. After a few years, Visioneer merged with ScanSoft, one of its prime market competitors which were followed by a couple of more mergers resulting in the establishment of Nuance. Currently, Nuance Communications has more than 6,500 employees developing quality solutions for its clients. The solutions provided by Nuance are incorporated across many industries including healthcare, financial services, telecom, retail, government, and many more.

History of Nuance Communications

The company, Nuance Communications has its roots back in 1992 when Visioneer was founded by Pierre-Alain-Cotte. When the company was founded it was a privately owned company that developed a sheetfed scanner called PaperMax. Visioneer started selling its different business divisions to other companies which included hardware business to Primax Electronics and spinning off PaperPort, Visioneer’s proprietary software. In 1999, Visioneer decided to acquire ScanSoft from Xerox and the newly formed company was known by the brand name ScanSoft.

The history of ScanSoft dates back to 1974 when Raymond Kurzweil founded a company to develop the first omni-font optical character recognition system. This company and the technology were sold to Xerox in 1980 which later became famous as ScanSoft. After the acquisition of ScanSoft by Visioneer, the newly formed public company focussed on looking beyond just designing desktop imaging software. So, in 2001, the company entered the speech recognition market after acquiring Lernout & Hauspie. After entering into this new sector, the biggest competitor of ScanSoft was Nuance Communications. In 2005, ScanSoft decided to merge with its competitor and thus acquired Nuance for $221 million. The merged company was named Nuance Communications.

Nuance Communications
Image source: forbes.com

Technologies of Nuance Communications

Nuance uses cutting-edge technologies to provide advanced solutions across a wide range of industries. In 1996, the company launched a product called PowerGrid which was the first clinical speech-to-text automation product for the healthcare industry. This product helped in cutting the transcription cost by 87 percent. On the other hand, Dragon Systems which was a part of ScanSoft (since it acquired Lernout & Hauspie) made some major breakthroughs. In 1997, Dragon NaturallySpeaking was rolled out and it became the first speech detection system in the world for commercial use. In 2012, Nuance became the first company to enable mobile EHRs with speech recognition systems which helped the doctors to document medical records on the go. The two companies Nuance and ScanSoft (Dragon Systems) gave each other very strong competition, so the merger of the two companies created an even more powerful conglomerate in the speech recognition business.

After the merger till recent date, Nuance Technologies has rolled out many impressive products with ensured quality and protection. In 2015, the automatic speech recognition technology of Nuance was combined with a major television network provider for delivering a remote-controlled voice interface to the customers. In 2017, Dragon TV bagged the Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for “Contextual Voice Navigation for Discovering and Interacting with TV Content.” The customers of Nuance have been recipients of many prestigious awards for the enhanced quality of work they produced by using Nuance solutions which helped the company win the Technology Partner of the Year award.

Acquisitions and Mergers

After ScanSoft merged with Nuance, the merged company acquired many companies from 2006 till date. The first acquisition was for $357 million in 2006 when it bought Dictaphone Corporation. Nuance acquired companies from a variety of sectors which helped it expand to biometric solutions, healthcare documentation, etc. In 2011, Nuance acquired Noterize, a company that developed software for Apple iPad. This year, Microsoft has offered to buy Nuance Communications for $19.7 billion but the deal is still pending.

Mark Benjamin – CEO of Nuance Communications

Mark Benjamin is the CEO and President of Nuance Communications since 2018. Even after the deal is successfully closed with Microsoft, Mark will stay as the CEO of the company. Before Mark joined Nuance, he served as the President and COO of NCR Corporation. Mark completed his graduation from the University of Miami and has a rich working experience of more than 20 years across 100 countries.

Trend Micro

Trend Micro – The World’s Largest Web Security Firm.

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The past few years have been years of fast growth for the internet and other web services. From sending instant messages to making online payments, everything has been really easy for every person. But with this ease of doing things, the internet has also brought danger to the security of data and other important assets online. To deal with such situations, lots of firms and developers are already working dedicatedly to ensure safer web surfing to making big transactions online for people. One such name which has been successfully providing cyber security services to its clients is Trend Micro.

About The Company

Trend Micro Inc., aka Torendo Maikuro Kabushiki-Gaisha, is an American-Japanese multinational cyber security company founded on 24 October 1988. The company has its global headquarters based in Tokyo, Japan, and Irving, Texas, United States. It has been working to provide software solutions, cloud computing as well as cyber security services to its clients all around the world for the past 32 years. The cyber security solutions by Micro Trend cover all platforms based on VMWare, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon AWS, etc. The company has also launched its research, development, and support center, named TrendLabs, operational in different parts of Asia, Europe, and North America.

Trend Micro
Image source: wikimedia.org

The Founding of Trend Micro

Steve Chang, along with his wife, Jenny Chang, and her sister, Eva Chen, founded Trend Micro on 24 October 1988 in Los Angeles. The company started off by selling protection dongles to a United States-based Rainbow Technologies. Soon the founders shifted the company headquarters to Taipei, and Trend Micro acquired a Japanese software firm in 1992, moving the headquarters to Japan. The company bagged a contract from Intel and supplied anti-virus to the latter. Intel also helped Trend Micro to sell its anti-virus in the US and Europe.
In 1996, Trend Micro partnered with Novell. The company got listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1998, and the next year, it start to trade on the United States-based NASDAQ. The company expanded its operations by acquiring companies like Braintree, Third Brigade, Identum, Kelkea, InterMute, and Provilla, etc. These acquisitions also helped Trend Micro to open offices in various parts of Europe, America, and Asia. By the end of the 2000s, Trend Micro was already making IP filtering software, antispyware programs, antispam software, data loss prevention software, and ID-based email encryption software.
With the acquisition of Leeds in June 2010, Trend Micro started to provide cloud-based data storage and synchronization services, too. In the next decade, the company acquired names like Mobile Armor, AffirmTrust, Broadweb, IMMUNIO, TippingPoint, etc. In 2013, the company moved its headquarters to Irving, Texas, and the next year, it established a partnership with INTERPOL to provide its Threat Intelligence Service to the latter. Company also bagged a contract from Microsoft to offer Cloud App Security to Microsoft Office 365, which later was adopted by companies like Dropbox and Google Drive.
In 2015, Company got certified as a VCE validation ready as well Vblock ready solution. The company also added Deep Security to its platform. Trend Micro has also been investing in startups for quite some time now through its venture capital subsidiary named Trend Forward Capital. Few of its major investments include Veem, Muse, Mojio, and Interaxon. The company had a partnership with Telco Systems in 2017 so that to expand its operations into virtual network cybersecurity. The next year, Trend Micro partnered with Cybersecurity Tech Accord to design programs to deal with malicious attacks by cybercriminal gangs and nation-states.

The Founders

Steve Chang, along with his wife Jenny Chang and her sister Eva Chen, founded Trend Micro in 1988. He is a renowned Taiwanese businessman born in Pingtung, Taiwan, in 1954. Chang did his schooling at the National Pingtung Senior High School and attained a graduate degree from the Fu Jen Catholic University in 1977. He also went to the US to pursue a post-graduate degree in computer science from Lehigh University in 1978 and graduated in 1979.
Chang started his career at Hewlett-Packard in Taiwan, where he held the post of head of sales operations, handling operations in seven countries. After gaining enough experience, he decided to start Trend Micro in 1988. He was the first CEO of the company. Chang is a popular businessman and has won awards like “Star of Asia” by Business Week for his work.

OpenText Corporation

OpenText Corporation – A Software Company That Was Once The Largest In Canada.

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OpenText is a company based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The founders of the company are Tim Bray, Gaston Gonnet, and Frank Tompa. This Canadian company was established in 1991 and it specializes in developing and selling enterprise information management (EIM) software. OpenText Corporation achieved success rapidly and expanded over time making it the largest software company in Canada in 2014. In 2016, the company was also recognized by Mediacorp Canada Inc as one of the top 100 Canadian employers.

About OpenText

There are various kinds of software applications that are developed by OpenText Corporation. This software helps large enterprises to manage and structure a large amount of unstructured data and helps in proper management. Apart from large enterprises, the software of OpenText is also used in many government agencies and professional service firms. OpenText also develops applications for mobile and online experience management.

Some of the main products of the company include Enterprise content management (ECM), Business Process Management (BPM), Customer Experience Management (CEM), Information Exchange, cybersecurity software, and many more. OpenText has more than 14,000 employees spread worldwide working to solve digital business challenges.

OpenText Corporation
Image source: www.cmscritic.com

The Early Phase Of OpenText Corporation

OpenText Corporation started off as a university project when the University of Waterloo and Oxford University partnered for this new journey. Both the universities joined hands to build the first online Oxford English dictionary. After the project showed positive results, OpenText Systems Inc was incorporated in 1989. But, eventually, the founders spun off the product from the University of Waterloo and OpenText Corporation was established in 1991. And, the company began shipping the product in September of the same year.

As the first online-based product of OpenText hit the market, it helped Yahoo! To search every word from every web page. An innovative product like this gained much popularity in the market and OpenText eventually became popular in the software industry. In 1994, Tom Jenkins joined OpenText as COO and was later made the President and CEO of the company. In 1996, the company held its first IPO and it got listed in NASDAQ under the name OTEX. Earlier in the next decade, OpenText crossed 1,000 employees and made $147 million as its annual revenue. By this time, OpenText also established 31 offices both in Canada and overseas.

Expansion And Acquisitions

As the demand for the products of OpenText increased, Gartner named the company as the global leader of ECM for the first time ever. It still holds the position as one of the leading companies which specialize in ECM. In 2014, the company decided to expand its market by adding B2B integration services and cloud-based fax services. OpenText achieved both of these when it acquired GXS for $1.06 billion. The company also became a market leader in content services when it acquired Dell EMC’s Enterprise Content Division including Documentum. The deal was closed for $1.62 billion in 2017.

The series of acquisitions continued for OpenText and so was expanding into new sectors every year. In 2019, OpenText acquired a company called Carbonite to enter the cybersecurity sector. Acquiring this company ensured cyber resiliency for customers along with an end-to-end platform offering data protection, digital forensics, etc. This deal was closed successfully for $1.45 billion. The acquisitions made by the company are made strategically to enter new markets and eventually become global leaders in those sectors. But, OpenText is yet to become one of the best companies in the cybersecurity sector. Last year, the company crossed the $3 billion mark of annual revenue.

About The Founders

Tim Bray apart from being a software developer is also an environmentalist and political activist. He studied mathematics and computer science for his bachelor’s degree. In 1987, Tim joined the Oxford English Dictionary project at the University of Waterloo, and before that he had working experience at Digital Equipment Corporation and Microtel Pacific Research.

Gaston Gonnet is a well-known computer scientist and entrepreneur. He became famous for his contributions to Maple Computer Algebra System. Gaston completed his education at the University of Waterloo. Apart from founding OpenText Corporation, he also co-founded Symbolic Computation Group.

Frank Tompa graduated from Brown University followed by the University of Toronto. He served as a faculty member at the University of Waterloo for some time. Frank is famous for co-founding OpenText and he was also awarded Queen Elizabeth II, Diamond Jubilee Medal, for his services to the country.