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Gemalto

Gemalto – A Renowned Digital Security Company recently purchased by the Thales Group.

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Gemalto is a famous electronic company providing services in the digital security sector. The main two products of the company are software applications and smart cards along with services related to them. Gemalto was formed in 2006 as a result of a merger between two companies, Axalto and Gemplus. In 2019, Gemalto came under the acquisition of the Thales Group and until then it was the biggest producer of SIM cards across the globe. Currently, the company’s headquarters are based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It operates in more than 45 countries and has plenty of production sites and R&D centers. So, let’s have a look at the parent companies and how they became a single big entity, Gemalto.

The Founding Story of Gemplus

Gemplus was founded in the late 1980s and it started trading in the prepaid phonecards field. In the 1990s words spread about the brand and hence Axalto tied up with Gemplus to create a strong presence in the market and grow its business. Before 1999, Gemplus conducted its business through a french limited partnership called Gemplus SCA but in 1999 it merged with Gemplus Associates and formed Gemplus SA, a joint stock company. The company filed for an IPO in December 2000 and after a few years, it restructured its corporate divisions. During this time, most of the subsidiaries of Gemplus SA were transferred to Gemplus International SA. In 2005, Gemplus acquired a Finland-based company for Setec Oy, and next year it merged with Axalto.

Schlumberger renamed as Axalto

Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals renamed the company in 2003 to Axalto to add more versatility to its brand. Schlumberger was a big hit in the chip technology market in 1979 and it developed its first telephone chip card in the 1980s. The company used to establish partnerships with several telecom operators in many nations and started developing a digital era of communication. In the 1990s the company designed its first SIM card which was used for the launch of GSM in Europe.

In the 21st century, the company has made breakthroughs by designing java-based microprocessor cards and smart cards. Long before Axalto merged with Gemplus, the former thrived in the electronics industry creating various products and applications for telecommunication, IT, healthcare, retail, and other sectors. Axalto was spun off as a different company from the parent company Schlumberger for the smart cards and POS terminal activities.

After The Merger

The merger between Axalto and Gemplus took place in 2006. During the next ten years, Gemalto acquired a series of companies in many countries. In Taiwan, it acquired Leigh Mardon’s personalization center, in South Africa, it acquired Multos International and NamITech, in Sweden, it acquired Todos AB, etc. In 2017, the Thales Group showed interest in acquiring Gemalto and as approved by the board of directors the acquisition was completed in 2019. The deal was closed for €4.8 billion. Gemalto today is famous for supplying software solutions, SIM, and managed services in the telecommunication market. The company has around 700 million subscribers spread internationally. Since it also partners with telecom operators, Gemalto has more than 400 telecom operator customers in the world.

Gemalto
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Gemalto also delivers EMV cards to several financial institutions after it partnered with Garanti Bank in Turkey. This partnership was established in 2008 after which it rolled out 300,00 Gemalto EMV contactless bank cards. In 2016, the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia also partnered with Gemalto for the same. Gemalto has also rolled out biometrics cards in recent years. The company has significant contributions in the public sector as it provides e-passports, e-driving license, e-government IDs, etc.

The CEO: Philippe Vallee

Since 2016, Philippe Vallee has been serving as the CEO of Gemalto. Before becoming the CEO, he worked as Chief Operating Officer and also in the EVP Telecommunications Business Unit of Gemalto. Philippe Vallee also worked at Gemplus before he became a part of Gemalto. He has a very rich background in marketing, sales, and product management and served at many positions in these units in Asia and Europe.

Sony

Sony Group Corporation – The Journey from Tape Recorders to Self-driving Cars

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Sony Group Corporation is a well-known multinational technology company. From cameras to smartphones and from manufacturing laptops to making entertainment content, the company is a conglomerate. Sony was founded exactly 75 years ago in 1946 in Nihonbashi, Japan, and today it operates from its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The company is known for its quality product and has its branches all over the world. Sony trades as a public company and is counted among one of the world’s largest manufacturers of consumer and professional electronic products.

The Founding of Sony

As soon the world war 2 was over, in May 1946, Akio Morita and  Masaru Ibuka started an electronics company named Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (trading name TTK). The company launched Japan’s first tape recorder in 1958, the Type-G. After multiple name changes of the company, the founders renamed the company Sony in the same year.

Sony
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The company specialized in making tape recorders and hit the U.S. market with its new launch, TR-63 radio, during the mid-50s. The portable transistor radios from Sony were in high demand, and in a span of ten years, starting from 1955, the company sold 100,000 units to American residents. In 1960, the company established the American branch of Sony Corporation. Sony had also become a great support for the Japanese economy, as the company was offering jobs to middle-aged Japanese people. The quality of the Sony products also brought faith among the American consumers for Japanese products.

The Years of Growth and Expansion

Other than making electronic products, Sony was also excelling in the other fields. In 1979, the company started an insurance company. Due to the recession in the 70s and 80s, it also started to manufacture Compact Disc to support the business. In the 90s, the company entered the gaming business and launched the most famous PlayStation. For further expansion, Sony also acquired CBS Records in 1988 and Columbia Pictures in 1989 and started its career in the entertainment and media business.

In 1997, the company in a partnership with Phillips and Toshiba launched  DVD, and it was also among the first ones to develop the Blu-ray optical disc format, which became popular in 2006 and onwards. In 2000 Sony also started to manufacture mobile phones, and in the next year, it partnered with Ericsson, establishing Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications. The partnership between the two brought a few of the first camera phones, which became really popular among people around the world. In 2012, Sony bought all the shares in Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and launched new series of smartphones under the name Xperia.

Sony
Image Source: api.time.com

On the other hand, the company continuously focused on its gaming business and launched the portable PlayStation console, the PlayStation Portable, in 2004.  The same year, it also established Sony BMG, an entertainment wing in partnership with Bertelsmann AG. In 2010, the company introduced the first mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras, and its global sales reached US$7.2 billion. In November 2011, Sony ranked 9th (jointly with Panasonic) in Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics.

Sony launched the first 4K OLED television in 2012 and became the third-largest maker of televisions in the world. In 2013, it had become one of the leaders in the smartphone industry. Sony sold its Vaio PC division in 2014. By 2015, Sony was also exploring possibilities in manufacturing self-driving cars and invested $842 thousand in ZMP INC.

In 2015, the company acquired the image sensor business of Toshiba, and the next year, it released the first PlayStation VR. The company introduced the OLED televisions under the brand name Bravia in 2017 and sold 13.5 million phones as well as 73.6 million units of  PlayStation 4, the same year. The company became the largest manufacturer of CMOS image sensors in 2020.

Products and Services

Sony is a conglomerate and works in multiple divisions, including game & network services, music, pictures, electronics products & solutions, imaging & sensing solutions, financial services, etc. Sony started by manufacturing tape recorders, but today it is known for its other high-quality products like 4K TV, high-quality Cameras, PlayStation, smartphone, computing devices, robotics products, etc. The company has its separate wing for entertainment and media business and is also into healthcare and biotechnology.

The CEO: Masaru Ibuka

Masaru Ibuka is one of the founders of Sony. He was born on 11 April 1908 in Nikkō City, Japan. He completed his high school education from Hyogo Prefectural Kobe High School and graduated from Waseda University. His first job after graduating was at  Photo-Chemical Laboratory, a movie film company. But later, he had to join the navy during World War II. After the war ended, he started a  radio repair shop in  Nihonbashi, Tokyo in 1945.

Akio Morita, on the other hand, was born on 26 January 1921 in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan. He graduated in Physics from the Osaka Imperial University in 1944. He joined the Imperial Japanese Navy as a sub-lieutenant during world war II, where he met Ibuka. Morita saw a newspaper article about Ibuka’s radio shop and contacted him to join the business. Both then founded Sony in 1946 as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo.

Keyence

Keyence Corporations – The Japanese Electronics and Semiconductor Leader

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Keyence is a Japanese multinational electronics company with its headquarters located in Osaka, Japan. The company is one of the largest manufacturers of electronic equipment like sensors, touch panels, 3D printers, microscopes, bar code readers, recorders, packaged software, etc.  It is a fabrication-less company such that it plans and designs the products, but the manufacturing is done by the other companies under a contract from Keyence. The company is operational in industries including automotive, IT, logistics, manufacturing, and software. Keyence is a publically traded company, and over 8000 people are working for it in its global offices.

Founding of Keyence

Takemitsu Takizaki founded Keyence in March 1972 as Lead Electric. The company got worldwide recognition as a leader in the field of industrial automation and inspection equipment manufacturing in 1974. In 1975, the company brought a new product, ‘high accuracy proximity sensor’, and the high demand for the product brought lots of success and growth to the company. In the next ten years, the company was known as the world leader in the electronic industry.

Keyence
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In 1983, the company introduced the optical fiber photoelectric sensor, and the next year, it established its first international office in the United States. Keyence developed the first photoelectric sensor to utilize a laser diode as the light source in 1986, and the same year, the name of the company was changed to Keyence Corporation. The company introduced a compact barcode reader under its name in 1989, and in 1990, it came with a microscope having a built-in monitor. In the next decade, the company developed the world’s smallest machine vision system, the world’s first autofocus color laser microscope, and a high speed and high accuracy machine vision system.

The years starting from 2000 were the years of innovation for the company. It was developing new products every year, and the world’s first 3-Axis laser marker (2006) as well as the world’s first CMOS laser sensor (2007), was one of them. Keyence also introduced the world’s first microscope with high-speed magnified video capture capabilities in 2008 and the fastest laser triangulation sensor in the industry in 2009. world’s smallest micro-head (2011), the world’s fastest 2D/3D laser displacement sensor (2012), and the world’s first macroscope with one-shot 3D measurement (2013) are also credited under the name of Keyence.

The Products

From photoelectric sensor and proximity sensors to barcode reader, laser markers, and digital microscopes, a large client base of Keyence rely on the company for these products. Keyence specializes in manufacturing products under categories like automation sensors, industrial safety, industrial laser markers, machine vision systems and vision sensors, industrial inkjet printer, measurement systems and sensors, advanced microscope, static eliminators, and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC).

Keyence Today

Keyence has been in the electronic industry for almost 50 years, and since the inception of the company, the world has witnessed the per year steady growth of the company. The company is one of the leaders in the development and manufacturing of automation equipment worldwide. Other than the electronic and semiconductor industry, the company includes clients from the automotive, food and packaging, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical industries. 

As of 2018, the company made revenues worth US$4.958 billion, and 6000 people were working for it in its global offices. It has appeared in the “Top Ten Most Excellent Companies in Japan” list by Nihon Keizai Shimbun multiple times. It has also been named as one of the best companies for employees in terms of salaries, the average annual salary for full-time employees, etc. Keyence operates through its network of  16 international organizations.

The Founder: Takemitsu Takizaki

Takemitsu Takizaki founded Keyence Corporation in 1972. He is a well-known Japanese businessman and currently serving as the honorary chairman of Keyence. Takizaki was born on 10 June 1945 in Japan. He completed his high school education at Amagasaki Industry High School. Apart from his interest in electronics and semiconductors, he is also a keen fossil collector.

After founding the Keyence, he held multiple posts at the company. He served the company as the chairman, president, and representative director. Presently, he is one of the members of the board at Keyence. AS of 2020, the net worth of Takizaki is $24 billion.

Expedia Group

Expedia Group – A Travel Technology Company leveraging its platform for connecting Travelers with Brands.

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Expedia Group is one of the world’s largest travel platforms founded by Rich Barton in 1996. The company was founded as a division of Microsoft twenty-four years ago. The company’s headquarters are based in Seattle, Washington, US. Travel technology is a sector that has gained huge demand and unleashed the potential for many companies in the past few decades.

Expedia provides a platform where travelers can connect with hotels, find different tour packages, and most importantly offers plenty of choices. A company like Expedia helps out every kind of tourist and traveler to have the best travel experience at the same time gives a platform for small travel businesses to grow. Since Expedia has a strong online presence, it provides exposure to local companies in the travel sector thus uplifting small businesses.

A Brief Introduction of Expedia Group

Expedia Group can be best described as a group of travelers and technologists working around the clock to make your journey memorable and worthy. The company is highly dedicated to connecting travelers with the right partners across a global platform. Throughout the past twenty-four years, Expedia has acquired and partnered with several companies creating extensive portfolios of many businesses and brands.

Expedia Group
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Today, Expedia has more than  70 terabytes of data which helps them show the most optimized path for both the business and the traveler to gain the best experience. Expedia has many products under its brand name such as BedandBreakfast.com, CarRentals.com, Hotels.com, Local Expert, etc. So, let’s have a glimpse at how this journey started.

History of Expedia Group

Back in 1996, there weren’t many online travel agencies and hence the market had lesser competition. Expedia was established as Microsoft Expedia Travel Services and soon the word Expedia became very common every time traveling came up as a topic of discussion. The word Expedia was born from two words “Exploration” and “Speed” and the quality of work justified the name of the company. The company went public in 1999 and got spun off as an independent business.

In 2001, IAC/InterActiveCorp showed interest in the company and bought shares worth $1.5billion. After two years, Expedia was fully acquired by IAC/InterACtiveCorp and it became a part of IAC Travel. After the acquisition, Rich Barton stepped down from the position of CEO and he was replaced by Erik Blachford. Next year, IAC Travel was spun off into Expedia and the former CEO was replaced by Dara Khosrowshahi. After IAC Travel and Expedia became a single entity the parent company spun off Expedia Inc in 2005. Many businesses were under the name of Expedia Inc such as Expedia Corporate Travel, TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, etc.

Expedia Group
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In 2011, TripAdvisor media group was spun off from Expedia Inc and the latter got to keep the portfolio of travel transaction brands. This year the company also showed interest in gaining market presence in the Asia Pacific region and hence partnered with Air Asia, Tencent, and eLong. Under the leadership of Dara Khosrowshahi, Expedia became a Fortune 500 company. Gradually, the lines of businesses started expanding for Expedia as it started providing technology solutions and acquired companies in the same field. In 2013, the company invested in metasearch and partnered with Citigroup to create Expedia+cards so that members can earn points and certain benefits. The company went through a rather rough year in 2019 which led to cutting off 3,000 jobs in the next year.

Acquisitions

Expedia Inc acquired a lot of companies since it was born. Most of the companies are US-based businesses while a few are from European countries as well. Expedia made its first acquisition in 2000 when it bought Travelscape, an internet service provider company. Next year, Expedia bought Vacation spot which was also an internet service provider. Expedia bought a handful of travel agencies including Classic Custom Vacations, Metropolitan Travel, Egencia, Travelocity, Orbitz, etc. Recently it acquired CanadaStays, a Canadian holiday rental service.

The CEO: Rich Barton

Richard Barton commonly known as Rich Barton is a very famous American internet entrepreneur currently serving as the CEO of the Zillow Group. In 1989, he graduated from Stanford University with an engineering degree and started working for Microsoft in 1991. He founded Expedia while working in Microsoft as the company was planning to build a travel guidebook back then. Later, Barton understood the potential of Expedia and it was officially launched in 1996. Barton’s successful career made him a billionaire in 2020.

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.