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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.

sage group

Sage Group – Story Of One Of The Largest Software Companies In The UK.

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The Sage Group was founded in 1981 and is one of the leading enterprise software companies in the UK. After Oracle and SAP, Sage has taken the third position in terms of becoming the largest supplier of enterprise resource planning software. The founders of the company are David Goldman, Paul Muller, and Graham Wylie. Sage Group is currently based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK. The product of Sage has its usability in all types of industrial sectors worldwide. Today, Sage Group has more than 13,000 employees that serve millions of businesses in both the UK and overseas. The company is spread across 23 international markets in Latin America, North America, Asia, Australia, Africa, and Europe. Steve Hare is the CEO of the Sage Group and Sir Donald Brydon is the working Chairperson.

Foundation of the Sage Group

The origin of the Sage Group and the idea behind it dates back to 1981 when David Goldman wanted to create quotes for his print business and keep track of his account. He wanted a very impactful solution for this and started working with a team at Newcastle University. While working, he was assisted by Dr. Paul Muller who was a computer expert working with NASA, and also a student, Graham Wylie who took a summer job writing code for an accounting firm. David and other members of the team realized that the solution that they were building can be beneficial for other businesses as well. This idea led to the foundation of the Sage Group which aimed to develop accounting software for small businesses.

Today, the solutions of Sage include account management, payrolls, HR, assets, construction, estate, enterprise systems, etc. Once David and other team members started to develop the product, he hired more employees. The first product of the company was called Sage Accounts and the code was written by Graham Wylie, the student who was hired for a summer job at Campbell Graphics (the print business of David Goldman). After developing the first product successfully, Sage started selling the software to other printing businesses and eventually expanded its network. Impressed by the work of Graham and Dr. Paul, they were brought on board as a part of Sage.

sage group
Image source: wikimedia.org

The Success of the Company

After developing the first version of the product and selling it to other print businesses, the demand for Sage increased. In 1984, the company developed Sage Software, a product that was built for the Amstrad PCW word processor. The same year, the sale of the Sage Software increased by ten folds from 30 to 300 each month. After a few years, Sage got listed on the London Stock Exchange and became a publicly-traded company. In the 1990s, Sage expanded overseas and established an Irish division of the business in Dublin. The company also opened Sage’s professional Accountant Division and entered FTSE 100. Sage eventually entered the mid-range business software market by the end of the 20th century.

In 2001, Sage Group entered the contact management market after acquiring Interact Commerce Inc and next year bagged the “Business of the Year” in the National Business Awards. The company also became famous as the Sage shares performed the best in the 90s compared to other UK businesses. Sage also sponsored £6 million for the new music center in Gateshead which is now known as Sage Gateshead. After two years, in 2003, Graham Wylie retired from the company and there were new members joining the executive team of Sage. Steve Hare became the CEO of the company in 2018 and before that, he served as the CEO of Sage since 2014. The Sage group currently has 6.1 million customers spread across the world from Africa to the Middle East, from Australia to Asia focusing on management solutions as well as engaging in non-profit works.

Steve Hare – CEO of Sage Group

Steve Hare is a famous British businessman who joined Sage with a rich industrial experience. He worked at General Electric Company in many roles including serving as the CFO of the company. He also worked at Spectris plc and Invensys and was a partner at Apax Partners. Currently, he is the CEO of the Sage Group and he was named the best CEO of the UK by Glassdoor during the pandemic.

car rental software

Top 7 Reasons for choosing a car rental software for your rental business

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Initiating a business on rental services is trending across the world, that due to the human’s mindset to choose products and services on rental than to buy it. There are many more reasons behind choosing rental services as these are cost-effective and we don’t need a space for them in our home.

Car RentalSoftware

Also Read: Travis Kalanick: A Billion Dollar Uber Ride

Without taking stress about the size, shape, and space, any product and service can be rented relied on the demand, in this way both renter and owners are profited. For an easily accessible and reliable sharing of cars, people prefer can rental software

Yes. Mobile transactions are getting high traction.

In 2019 we have seen the highest increase in the number of payments via mobile applications as most of the banks are also providing their mobile banking services. Awareness of lower emissions and increased concern has tended to an increase in car rental alternatives. Carpooling and car rental primarily help in decreasing the number of cars on the road.

The global car rental market in 2015 was valued at $79,648 million and is expected to increase $164,335 million by 2022, increasing at a CAGR of 11.6% from 2016 to 2022. With the drastic increase in population and pollution levels, the car rental business has seen a huge transformation over the past few years. It is becoming the best and most trustworthy industry in fleet transportation.

Also Read: Lyft: Making Car-pools Comfortable and Profitable

According to Statista reports, we can measure the growth of car rental business easily:

  • User penetration is 3.4% in 2019 and is expected to hit 3.8% by 2023.
  • Revenue in the car rentals service amounts to US$59,518m in 2019.
  • The average revenue per user (ARPU) currently amounts to US$236.07.
  • In global comparison, most revenue is generated in the United States (US$21,783m in 2019).
  • Revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2019-2023) of 3.2%, expecting in a market volume of US$67,463m by 2023.

Need for Car Rental Software For Fast Growth Of Car Rental Business

Based on the above reports, it has proved that the car rental industry is the fastest growing and highly profitable sector across the world. But, this is the age of app technology and user needs everything in a mobile device. So, to grow your business with a bullet speed you must go for a taxi booking app development company to get a fully-functional and user-friendly taxi application for your business.

Also Read: Cabify: The Leading Exclusive Ride-Sharing Service from Spain

A taxi booking app helps you manage bills, solve disputes, invoice generation and make interaction easy between owner and renter. Its interactive and efficacious admin panel assists administrators to manage the whole system productively.

Let me list out the top reasons for choosing a car rental software for your rental business

Grow your business

A taxi booking app development company ensures that your car rental business runs for the extra mile by offering marketing-supported features and data analytics. With the use of innovative tools, your rental business can easily unlock various revenue opportunities. With the help of car rental software, you can spread your business worldwide without going anywhere. Such software also increases the productivity and revenue of your business.

Fleet Management

Managing inventory with business growth has become a tiresome task that needs consideration, time, impacting productivity and profitability. A robust mobile application allows you to easily access information anywhere and anytime at your convenience. with the help of GPS and tracking information fleet management feature offered in the taxi booking app decreases the risk factors such as mishandling, misappropriation, or theft while the car is under the care of another.

Also Read: Unleash The Passionate Traveller Inside You With TripAdvisor

Online Presence

Definitely, in today’s competitive market, it is only the technology that drives the world, to show your presence worldwide, an app or a website is an essential tool to interact with your users. In this manner, a taxi booking app is the most successful resource for your car rental business.

Improve customer experience

Taxi booking app also reinvents the way people choose rental services. Professional car rental app development companies infuse user-friendliness with an intuitive and clean mobile app to provide a simplistic and quick booking experience to your users.

Also Read: The Smart Taxi : India’s Premium Cab Service; ‘Travel in Style’

User Engagement

The most important part of booking a taxi these days is an app or a software system. In today’s competitive market getting customer’s attention towards your products and services is very typical. But if you have an online presence through software or an Uber-like taxi app then it becomes easy to engage customers with your business by helping them to fulfill their car rental needs by their mobile devices.

Get the car information anytime

Whenever a user order to rent a taxi, ensuring the availability of a car can be troublesome. In worst situations, it can also impact the reputation of your business because you fail in meeting renter’s needs. Rental software or app assists you track the car availability just by utilizing the serial number or a car number that has been integrated or added to the inventory. With a taxi booking app, it also becomes easy to see the timeline in terms of the number of cars available to serve at that time.

Also Read: Gett : Online Taxi Service, Making the Lives of Israeli People Easier

Detect Any Damage and notify maintenance

Rental software assists you to get the details of what damage item or what lost. So, in case you want to charge the consumer, the bill will be issued automatically. As we know that every car needs maintenance after some time, so with a rental app you will get notify when the maintenance needs to be done.

Conclusion

Providing the best renting experience for customers is very essential. It will pull your car rental business rapidly and make you the winner of the market. Satisfied customers always suggest your services to others. To maintain it for a long, you need to have a taxi booking app or car rental software.

Also Read: Yandex – The Google of Russia Simplifying the Lives of the Russians

SAP SE

SAP SE – The Largest Company Developing Enterprise Software For Business Operations

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Even a small enterprise needs the help of the IT sector to run his or her business smoothly. With the arrival of digitalization, we don’t realize to the extent we are getting dependent on the internet. Data transfer, data storage, software development has become an integral part of the tertiary sector of the economy. With emerging businesses in every field, the software companies are also flourishing providing them with enterprise software. SAP SE is the world’s leading enterprise software company. It develops software for carrying out numerous business operations and to provide better client-customer relation. Five founders, Dietmar Hopp, Hans-Warner Hector, Hasso Plattner, Klaus Tchira, and Claus Wellenreuther founded the company in 1972. It is one of the oldest companies in the sphere of software development and one of the most successful as well. It is a company that serves worldwide with an employee count of more than 100,000.

About the Founders

All the five founders worked at IBM before founding SAP SE. When the company was founded Dietmar Hopp served as the CEO of the company for ten years. In 1998, Dietmar became the Chairman of the supervisory board. And, from 2003 he served as a board member for a couple of years.

Hans-Werner Hector is famous as a German software engineer and an entrepreneur. His net worth is $1.9 billion. It was through the success of SAP SE he became one of the richest men in the world. Due to some arguments and conflicts of interest with his partners, he left the company in 1997.

Hasso Plattner served as the Chairman of the supervisory board of SAP SE since 2003. After the financial year 2017, Forbes reported his net worth to be $13.1 billion. In 2005, he founded Hasso Plattner Ventures, a venture capital fund to support the young entrepreneurs. Currently, he lives in Potsdam, Germany.

Klaus Tchira served as the board member of SAP SE from 1998-2007. In 1995, he founded a non-profit organization, Klaus Tchira foundation for supporting innovative projects. He passed away on 31st March 2015.

Claus Wellenreuther left IBM in1971 and then programmed a financial accountancy system for batch processing. After this, he joined the co-founders of SAP SE and founded the company. He also founded DCW software in 1982 which SAP acquired in 2003.

Origin of SAP SE

Initially, IBM received the rights for working on Scientific Data Systems (SDS)/ SAPE Software project. Five scientists from the AI sector of the company worked in it until the project was called off. So, instead of leaving it midway the co-founders of SAP SE decided to resign from IBM and establish another company. SAP SE is the abbreviation for Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing.

The Journey of SAP SE

The first client of SAP SE was the German branch of Imperial Chemical Industries. SAP SE was interested in making real-time system software. So, they developed the payrolls and accounting software instead of punch cards. On the contrary, IBM used punch cards for storing the information.

In 1973, the company launched its first commercial product which was known as SAP R/98. After this product, much other modified software was launched using the base model of SAP R. In the late 1970s, SAP R/2 was launched followed by SAP R/3 in 1992. In the meantime, the company shifted its headquarters to Walldorf, Germany.

In the following years, SAP got listed in the German Stock Index DAX and STOXX Europe 50.

Expansion 

From 2012, SAP eventually started showing interest in cloud-based storage. A company in the IT sector always needs to keep up with the changes taking place around the world. So, it started acquiring companies that could help it sell cloud-based products. In 2014, the company acquired Concur Technologies, a cloud-based travel management company for $8.3 billion. This year, the company came into a joint venture with IBM for the same purpose.

To date, the company has acquired more than 70 other companies on an international level. Some of the biggest companies SAP bought are Qualtrics, CallidusCloud, Concur Technologies, Ariba, etc. SAP has a partnership with companies like Adobe, GK Software, CA Technologies, and many more.

The company also plans to invest billions of dollars in sectors like the Internet of Things. By the end of 2020, the Company will invest around €2 billion in sectors like this. The company is also planning to cut employees. Currently, the Company is putting exclusive interest in sectors like AI, ML, IoT, and the blockchain community.

ION Energy

Akhil Aryan: Founder of ION Energy who is helping to boost the sustainability of clean energy

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Presently, electrical devices are used everywhere. If you visit any place, you can see half of the place is decorated with electrical devices. Additionally, the Indian government is focusing on promoting the use of electric vehicles all over India by 2030. Electric devices like Electric vehicles are shaping the future. However, the functionality of these devices is depending upon the battery. We can say that the battery is the heart of any electrical device. Therefore, battery management is most important for its better functionality. ION Energy is a well-known platform for advanced battery management for powering energy storage systems. Especially, electric vehicles. Also, it focused on technology that is essential to improve the performance and life of lithium-ion batteries. However, ION Energy is the culmination of Akhil Aryan’s childhood fascination with electrons as well as energy. 

What is ION Energy? 

ION Energy is an energy management company. Especially, it focused on electric battery management. Also, work on technologies that help to increase the life of lithium-ion batteries. In fact, ION energy provides the complete tool kit to build and manage world-class batteries. However, its main purpose is to provide high-performance batteries all over the world. Indirectly enabling electrical mobility and boosting the sustainability of clean energy.

Recently, the company launched UDYR. It’s their flagship battery that is built around Electro-Mechanical assembly and their proprietary BMS. 

The backstory of ION Energy foundation

Since childhood, Akhil Aryan is very fascinated by electrons and energy. He is always curious about the fact that everything we can see or not is made up of atoms. Also, he was well-known to the fact that electric energy is the future. However, the Indian government was promoting the use of Electrical vehicles all over the country. So, it was a great opportunity to set up a business in this field. But he realized that rather than developing electric vehicles, it is important to make them sustainable and efficient. As a result, he set up an energy management company called ION Energy in 2017. 

Akhil Aryan is a well-known serial entrepreneur. Because he successfully handled the establishment of miscellaneous companies across three continents. He founded ION Energy back in 2017 with the vision of eco-friendly energy management. 

Early Life

Akhil Aryan- ION Energy founder

Akhil Aryan is Born and brought up in Mumbai. In fact, he spent most of the time at a young age amongst Mumbai’s ambitious hustlers. During the teenage, he was one of the children that could not remain idle for a minute. He was fascinated with technical stuff. In mid of the 90s, his father brought a computer for him. So, it was the golden opportunity that helped his curious mind to learn technology. After a very short time, he built production software. At that time, Akhil was just 14 years old. He earned a degree in financial markets from Mumbai University. 

Career

At the age of 16, he did an internship at L Nagpal Developers. During the internship, he helped to generate one-million-dollar sales with his innovative idea. After that, he wanted to work at IGSL. This company was well-known for its advisory and trading services in cash. Also, derivatives equity & debt market, commodities as well as currency futures. However, his mother felt that he should complete his education first. Thus, to work with IGSL, Akhil had to promise his mother that he will complete his graduation. Akhil represented during the company’s Initial Public Offering (IPO). In fact, its IPO was oversubscribed 4.5 times. 

Other start-ups of Akhil Aryan

Akhil is the successful founder of several miscellaneous companies across the world. In fact, he co-founded the first company at the age of 18. Presently, he is handling many businesses successfully. Other than ION energy, he actively runs his other start-ups in various fields. Includes, technical training, finance as well as software developments.  

ION Education

It is an education space technology company. Akhil co-founded the company in 2010 with the help of Shanay Shah. In fact, it is the first interactive training institute in India that provides training in the Financial market and real-estate. Also, ION education promotes entrepreneurship as well as provide training. At starting, the company successfully trains more than 1300 students in one year. In addition, Ion education helps students to get industrial exposure by means of an internship.  

OneShop

In 2013, he started working on OneShop. OneShop provides a platform to add store to blogs or websites. It is started in San Francisco. But after the company won a SIRIUS program, it shifted to London. However, it helped Aryan to set his network in Europe.

Haptik

In 2015, Akhil returned to his motherland India. That time, he was consulting with some of the start-ups related to the ecosystem. He realized, conversational AI has scope in the future. As a result, he co-founded Haptik to provide a service of conversational AI. Today, it is the largest conversational AI platform in the world. Presently, it handles more than 3 million AI conversations per month.

Docker

Solomon Hykes : The Founder of Enterprise Container Platform, ‘Docker’

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Open-source is one technology that has helped developers to improve their software and lead it to the next level with the help of other developers, without even knowing them. This technology not only helps the main developer but also the other developers to grow their skills. WordPress being one of the biggest examples of such successful startup that has emerged mostly because it is open source and the community behind it. Soloman Hykes, also known as a French founder in Silicon Valley, is another startup owner, who made use of the open-source technology and established one of the biggest open-source development and deployment container providers, Docker.

Solomon Hykes was born to an American father and a French-Canadian mother in New York. But his family flew to France when he was four years old. He was introduced to computers when he was seven and instantly, became interested in coding. Hykes joined the Epitech School in 2001, where he started learning to programme. Alongside his studies, he got a job at a nearby cyber cafe, where he practised coding and ran the cafe’s servers. During this time, he also spent six months at the University of California, San Diego, and even, worked for a French movie company in Los Angeles.

In 2006, he graduated as a computer engineer and bagged a job at a computer security company. But there was something else he wanted to do. Only two years after starting his first job, in 2008, Hykes resigned to start a company of his own, along with Sébastien Pahl, a fellow student from Epitech. The two named the company as dotCloud, with which the two started working on a software that would offer a platform for developers to code on Amazon’s cloud.

Solomon Hykes Docker
Image Source: techcrunch.com

The two co-founders took the startup to Y Combinator in summer 2010 but got rejected. They again applied for the startup program in the winter session of the same year. But yet again were not selected. But at the very last moment, Paul Graham from Y Combinator changed his mind and selected dotCloud on a condition. The condition was to make all the Y Combinator peers to signup for dotCloud’s software.

At the startup program, Hykes presented the idea of a common container for software development and deployment. He wanted to create a container that could be accessed from anywhere, such that many computers interconnected into a cluster. With the very idea, dotCloud raised a decent amount of seed funding and started developing the software.

In 2011, Hykes shifted the company to the Silicon Valley, and the company raised an $11 million in Series A in April in the same year, from names like Peter Fenton of Benchmark Capital. At that time, the company was the only PaaS provider, and even, AWS was providing better support for the software. The company started to grow rapidly, and in 2013, the company dotCloud became Docker.

Though the company was going through a good time, there was still something that it was lacking. During the same time, Hykes got a decent offer for selling the company, but he decided not to and was tinkering around to make things right for the company.

So in the same year, Hykes made the company’s software an open-source platform, and RedHat was the one big company to step in to use the very software for its PaaS platform, OpenShift. In 2014, Microsoft announced that it will be integrating the Docker products into its Windows Server version in 2016. The same year, Google, Amazon and IBM also came in a partnership with the company. In 2014, the company raised a $40 million in the Series C funding led by Sequoia Capital. The company also acquired another startup named startup Orchard.

In 2015, the company became a unicorn company, after it valued $1 billion through a $95 million Series D fundraising led by Insight Venture Partners. By the end of the same year, the company again raised an $18 million in the Series D round. In the latest round of funding in 2018, the company has raised a $92 million.

In the beginning, Docker started with a single project, but now, it hosts projects like containers, LinuxKit, SwarmKit, and the Moby, etc, based on the Docker technology.

On 28 March 2018, Solomon Hykes stepped down as the CEO of the company, remaining on the board of the company valued $ 1.3 billion.