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Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more

Visma

Visma – A Leading Software Company In The Nordic Region And Europe.

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Visma is a computer software company that is owned by a group of private equity firms. The company was founded in 1996 and it is based in Oslo, Norway. The Visma management only owns 6.6 percent of the company and the other owners include Hg and co-investors (major ownership), Cinven, Immediate Capital Group, and Montagu. Back in 1996, Company was formed by the merger of multiple companies are Multisoft, SpecTec, and Dovre Information Systems.

About The Company

Visma is a Nordic software company that mainly provides business software, IT consultancy, and related services. The main market of Company is spread across the entire Nordic region and also in Central and Eastern Europe as well. Some of the countries where the Company has offices are Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Romania, Hungary, United Kingdom, and many more. Currently, Company has around 900,000 customers out of which the majority are from Northern Europe.

The CEO of the company is Merete Hverven and there are 12,500 employees working under her supervision. Visma is a big organization and it has been divided into five groups for different operations. The five divisions are Visma SMB (software division), Visma Enterprise, Visma Custom Solutions, Cloud Infrastructure Services, and Commerce Solutions. The revenue generated last year by the company was 18.68 billion NOK.

Visma
Image source: kinstacdn.com

History of Visma

The company started its operations officially in 1996 and it got listed on Oslo Stock Exchange and started operating as a public company. The companies that today form Visma were merged in 1996 and together as a single organization rolled out three key products, SpecTec (marine), Visma Logistics, and Visma Business. In 1997, the company faced some financial crisis as the investment company planned for the growth of the company exceeded the company’s resources. In order to survive this turmoil, the company was restructured, and hence most of the management team and board of directors were replaced. A new CEO was hired for the company but at the same time, there were several layoffs.

Two years after reorganizing the company, it started expanding overseas. In 1999, the company opened offices in Denmark and the UK. The company started to prepare itself for the launch of Visma Business e-commerce, developed its web, and WAP extensions for all the applications of Visma. In 2000, Company decided to sell its Marine ASA’s operations. The deal was confirmed with a Dutch company called Station 12 and the cash Visma received was used to offer both software and outsourcing services within finance and payroll.

Growth and Expansion

In 2001, Company acquired a Swedish company called Spcs which was followed by acquiring a Finnish company called Liinos. Through the acquisition of Liinos, Company strategically entered the Finnish market. In the later years, Visma entered into the Norwegian and Danish market and also into the public sector through the acquisition of Møre Datasystemer. In 2003, the company also started a collaboration with Norway’s largest bank (DNB) and the national postal service. By the time the company was growing steadily, it established Visma’s Management Trainee program. In 2006, Company entered the Dutch market after it acquired AccountView, a software company. During this time, the ownership of the company changed as Visma became a private company with majority of ownership going to HgCapital.

Visma as a Private Company

After the change in ownership, the company established its retail IT division. In 2009, Company completed the construction of its new headquarters in Oslo and also became the second-largest accounting firm in Finland. In 2010, Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts acquired 76.9 percent ownership of the company and after this transaction, the valuation of the Company became 11 billion NOK. In the upcoming years, Visma acquired some more companies and rolled out products for medium and small-scale businesses. Last year, the company acquired Yuki, a Dutch company that provides a bookkeeping software platform.

Merete Hverven – CEO of Visma

In 2011, Merete Hverven joined Visma as HR Director and after two years she became the Chief Human Resource Officer. Last year, she became the CEO of the company and she has been awarded several prestigious mentions for her leadership, influence, and passion in tech. In 2019, she became one of the top three most influential women in technology by ODA Award Woman.

Neusoft Corporation

Neusoft Corporation – A Chinese Software Company Founded By The Northeastern University Professors.

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Neusoft Corporation is a famous company in the IT industry known for mainly software development and designing medical equipment and systems. The company was founded in 1991 and back then it was known as Shenyang Neu-Alpine Software Co Ltd. Liu Jiren and Li Huatian are known as the main founders of the company. Both of them were professors at Northeastern University and worked in the Computer Software and Network Engineering Research Laboratory. Since the professor of Northeastern University founded the college, the company was named after it and Neusoft is the acronym of Northeastern University Software.

About Neusoft Corporation

Neusoft Corporation is a very famous company based in China. Its headquarters is located in Shenyang, China. It is a publicly-traded company that is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The current CEO and Chairman of the company are Liu Jiren, one of the original founders of the company. Last year, the company was the largest enterprise in China for providing IT services.

Neusoft has several subsidiaries spread over various countries. In the US, it has offices in Michigan, Santa Clara, California, North Carolina, etc. In Asia, the company has entered the Japanese market and some of the other subsidiaries are present in Switzerland, Germany, and Romania. In 2012, Neusoft was the biggest IT outsourcing firm in China. Today, the company has approximately 20,000 employees across various continents.

Neusoft Corporation
Image source: www.massdevice.com

History Of The Company

Before officially establishing the company as Neusoft Corporation in 1991, it was first a research laboratory in the campus of Northeastern University. The two founders founded this computer research laboratory in 1988 and initially consisted of only three computers. The company started off with three people including the co-founders working in the lab. After two years, the laboratory expanded and became the NEU Computer Software Research and Development Centre. Next year, the NEU Centre established a joint venture with the Japanese company, Alpine Electronics and it was renamed as Neu-Alpine Software Research Institute.

Expansion

Software outsourcing became one of the main services provided by the company and Alpine became its first customer from overseas. In 1993, the company was renamed as Neu-Alpine Software Co Ltd. From the very beginning, Leu Jiren became the CEO of the company and all these developments took place under his jurisdiction. In the mid-1990s, the development of the Neusoft Park began and it was also entering a new market of the healthcare sector. Neusoft established the NEU Computer Imaging Centre and took interest in CT scanning and other medical technologies.
In 1996, the NEU Software Group Ltd was established. Until then it had only Alpine Electronics as one of its collaborative partners. But after the NEU Software Group was established it started partnering with multiple companies and one of them was Toshiba. The same year, Neusoft filed for an IPO and it became the first software company in China to get listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. In 1998, the company entered into a partnership with Boa Steel which strengthened the investor base of the company.

In early 2000, a new consolidation of investments took place which led to some changes in ownership of the company. The major investors of the company including Alpine Electronics, Bao Steel, and Toshiba became the shareholders of the Neusoft Group. With a strong partnership with multiple companies, Neusoft expanded very rapidly and by 2004 it had a total of 40 offices in China and 6,000 employees working there. The company, though became the largest outsourcing company in China, is still behind Indian giants like the Tata Group and Infosys. The main market of Neusoft is in China and Japan.

About The Founders

Liu Jiren is famous as the CEO and Chairman of the largest software company in China. He is a visionary and his exceptional knowledge about industry transformed a small business founded on a college campus into a multinational conglomerate. In 2019, he received Ernst & Young’s EY Entrepreneur of the Year Alumni Award for Societal Impact.

Li Huatian was an electrical engineer with immense contributions in the computer science fields. He is one of the oldest and earliest computer scientists from China who has significant contributions in the field. He was a professor both at Dalian University of Technology and Northeastern University. He passed away in January 2007.

verint systems

Verint Systems – Story of a New-York Based Analytics Company Founded in 2002.

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As businesses are growing rapidly in the digital era, the demand for software development, IT, and business consulting sectors is also booming. Verint Systems is one of those analytics companies that is known for software development and also for selling hardware products. The company’s headquarters is based in Melville, New York, US. Verint System wasn’t always an independently traded public company as it started off as a Comverse Infosys unit of Comverse Technology.

In 2002, Verint Systems was founded (became a public company) and is currently led by Dan Bodner, President, and CEO of Verint. The company has grown significantly after it became public and currently generates revenue in billions. Verint provides services to more than 150 countries and has over 10,000 clients. So, let’s have a look at the early years of the Company and how it spun off from Comverse Technology.

History of Company

Verint Systems, as a part of Comverse Technology, was founded in 1999. But, this business unit of Comverse Technology was originally incorporated in 1994 in Delaware. Back then it was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company which later became the business unit of Comverse Infosys. Before the company established itself as Verint Systems, its main focus was on the call recording market. The call recording market, back then, grew popular as it was the era when technology from analog tape transformed into digital recorders. In 1999, the company rolled out a service for internet call waiting.

The same year when Verint became the business unit of Comverse Infosys, the company decided to merge another division of Comverse with it. So, Verint was merged with a Comverse unit which was focused on the security and communication interception market. Converse Technology acquired a company called Loronix Information Systems Inc which along with Verint expanded into the video security market in 2001. And next year, Converse Infosys finally renamed itself Verint Systems.

verint systems
Image source: haarets.co.il

Verint Systems as a Public Company

In 2002, Company filed its IPO and became a public company although the majority of its stakes were still owned by Comverse Technology. After starting off as a public company, Verint expanded the range of solutions, entered into various overseas markets, and acquired a bunch of companies.

Some of the companies acquired by Verint Systems are MultiVision Intelligent Surveillance Limited which was a business in the video security sector. It also acquired a UK-based customer management company called CM Insight followed by a company that specialized in interaction recording and performance evaluation. Verint acquired all these companies in a short time span and thus strengthened its existing market and opened up new possibilities. Verint also acquired a data mining company called ViewLinks Euclipse Ltd and a workforce optimization company called Witness Systems Inc. In July 2008, Verint Systems acquired a very young company called Focal Info. Amit Bohensky founded this software company which mainly focused on web data extraction and analytics. Verint Systems acquired the company with an undisclosed monetary amount and the founder was hired back after the acquisition.

An Independent Company

After Verint became a public company in 2002, it was delisted from the NASDAQ stock exchange in 2006 along with Comverse Technology due to a scandal. But, again in 2010, Company was back on the NASDAQ stock exchange list and struck a deal with Comverse Technology to sell its remaining interest in Verint. In 2012, Company became a completely independent company as it bought the remaining stakes from Comverse for $800 million. After the buyout, Company made some major acquisitions which include KANA Software Inc for $514.2 million, Next IT for $30 million upfront cash and $20 million future payments, and a software company called OpinionLab for an undisclosed amount.

Dan Bodner – CEO of Verint Systems

Dan Bodner is serving as the CEO of Verint Systems since the company became a different entity that separated from Comverse Technology. Dan is attached to Comverse Technology when Verint was just a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company. Currently, he is also the Chairman of the Board of Verint Systems. Dan Bodner completed his education at the Israel Institute of Technology.

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
Image source: pbs.twimg.com

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.