Your Tech Story

software

ServiceNow

Software Enterprise company ServiceNow is named Leader in the 2020 Magic Quadrant by Gartner

Leave a Comment / Tech Story / By

Cloud computing is very crucial since data has become the key asset for every individual or a gigantic nation. The business tycoons are also dependent on big cloud companies these days for IT services. Because, no matter in which field or what size of a business is, IT service is required by all of them. ServiceNow is a famous company based in Santa Clara, California that provides IT services around the world. It provides a cloud computing platform that enables better efficiency of a company by managing its digital workflow. Four founders, namely, Fred Luddy, David Loo, Don Goodliffe, and Bow Ruggeri officially founded the company in 2003. Since then the company has acquired many businesses, expanded geographically, and hired over 11,000 employees.

About the founders

Fred Luddy

Fred Luddy worked as a software developer at Amdahl Corporation for four years. In 1990, he joined Peregrine Systems as the CTO of the company and worked there for thirteen years followed by founding ServiceNow. Currently, Fred is the Chairman of the Board of Directors at Service Now.

David Loo

David Loo is famous for being the CEO of Perspectium in 2013. But, before that, he was the founding developer of ServiceNow and resigned from the company in 2012.

Don Goodliffe

Don Goodliffe is one of the founding members of ServiceNow who was hired by Fred during 2005. He is currently the VP of the J&D Goodliffe Association.

Bow Ruggeri

Bow Ruggeri started his career as a junior software developer at controlroom.com followed by a developer at CTSNet. He was the Principal Architect at ServiceNow for seven years before he founded another start-up, Dreamtsoft.

History of ServiceNow

With a lucrative career experience, Fred founded ServiceNow in 2003, and eventually, the other three joined in. So, we can say that Fred is originally the father of the company who started it from scratch and wanted to enforce similar services as Peregrine Systems. After a couple of years, he decided to perform the first round of hiring and ended up with five more people in the team. Till then he was the only employee of ServiceNow. When the company was founded it was known as Glidesoft Inc.

In 2005, the company raised $2.5 million from its first funding round from JMI Equity. Next year, the company changed its name to ServiceNow followed by opening its first office in 2007. The company’s profit was remarkable and in 2006 its annual revenue summed up to $13 million. Eventually, the number of offices started increasing, and by 2011 they had offices in San Diego, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, London, and Frankfurt with more than 250 employees.

Eventually, the company came into partnership with a few companies one of them being Accenture. The company decided to file an IPO and in 2012 became a publicly-traded company. This year, ServiceNow shifted its headquarters from San Diego to Santa Clara.

Expansion and Business model

In the industry, ServiceNow is one of the earliest companies that started providing IT management services. So, the success of the company skyrocketed over no time and even the founders were swept off their feet. Bow Ruggeri, in one of his interviews, said that he never expected the company’s growth to increase so rapidly. Maybe this is the reason he stepped out and embarked on a whole new venture with Jerrod Bennett to experience it all over again and do it better.

ServiceNow started acquiring many companies starting with Mirror42 in 2013 followed by Entries in 2015 and Brightpoint Security in 2016. With AI and ML growing and dominating the modern world, ServiceNow acquired a machine learning startup, DxContinuum in 2017. Later in 2017, the company acquired Telepathy, a human-centered design firm that doubled the size of ServiceNow’s internal design agency. The latest acquisition of the company was in June 2020 when it acquired Sweagle.

ServiceNow’s business model is based on Platform as a Service (PaaS) provider that allows a customer to use the platform for running and managing applications without worrying about the infrastructure. Fred said that to excel with this kind of business model it should provide real values to customers. So, sticking to the old code is not a good idea and one must keep redesigning to match with the pace of the clients.

ServiceNow and Zoom

With the pandemic taking a big toll on the world, Zoom’s popularity was increased by many folds. This month, Zoom introduced new hardware as a service offering in partnership with ServiceNow. The deal is a symbiotic relationship as both parties will be benefited. While this new service of Zoom will run on one of the platforms of ServiceNow, ServiceNow will use Zoom for all its internal communication purpose. With recent end-to-end encryption recently launched by Zoom for paid customers, ServiceNow will be hugely benefited.

apple

Apple Files New Patent On Software That Allows Socially-Distant Group Selfies

Leave a Comment / Tech News / By

As the novel coronavirus continues its aggressive march around the world, it has had a massive impact on all spheres of our lives. Most experts believe that we will look at the time, in two periods, before and after corona. The global pandemic will have massive and long-lasting changes in the way we interact and communicate with people. With social distancing still being active in many zones, people socialise differently now. Another change that will be put in place will be how people meet and greet others. These changes seem to be verified by Apple’s new patent. Let us look at what the new patent is on and how this software will impact the world of technology.

software
Image source: theverge.com

New Software

Apple’s new patent is for a software that will allow users to take synthetic group selfies. This could be the future for group selfies as more people become aware of the need for social distancing. Also, this generated group selfie might become a viable alternative when you post pictures on social media during such times. Discovered by Patently Apple, the new patent application allows users to invite others to be a part of their selfies. The software will then generate a single image that captures all the participants and arrange them into a memorable group photo. The selfie can have in it photos, video images, and even live-streamed images. Also, users get to keep both the original and group selfie, and the recipients can modify it, and even put themselves in different positions within the group.

Not So New A Concept

While the idea of a socially-distant selfie seems bizarre right now, it is definitely a need of the hour. However, while it seems relevant now, due to the pandemic, it was not something born out of coronavirus. Instead, Apple first filed for such a patent long before, way back in 2018. It gained popularity now as the patent was granted only a few days back, on June 2. However, like with all patents, there is no guarantee that Apple will use this software or materialise it into a real product.

Product For the Future

The patent is essentially a way for Apple to envision and explore the possibility of such a product. However, it is in no way a roadmap for a specific product, which we may or may not see. Also, the pandemic makes the likelihood of such a product hitting the market higher. People are looking for innovative ways to reach out and stay connected with their loved ones. Such remote group selfies will serve as a perfect way to get people together safely and healthily. The app would allow people to invite friends, and friends can arrange their position in the selfie. Once all the invited people are in the frame, the software generates a group photo with everyone in place.

It looks like Apple is looking at a new avenue. With people having to spend time away from each other due to different reasons, such software might become a hit with the crowd. While there is no clarity regarding whether Apple will soon roll out such an app, the idea looks very promising indeed. It sure looks like Apple wants to be at the forefront when it comes to changes in the post-pandemic world.

Facebook Profile

Facebook Private Profile Viewer Software

Leave a Comment / Facebook, Tech tips / By

Everyone has these days Facebook private profile and people always seem busy on the messenger to update their profile like they are making money out of it. Yeah, it sounds funny, but it really seems quite confusing that what makes users spend all day long on the Facebook instant messaging app.

Facebook

On the other hand, the young generation that has opened their eyes in the presence of modern technology they are the ones who are obsessed with the use of Facebook and their exciting features for the sake of communication with the friend’s online, family members and with the people they don’t know in their real –life.

Young kids and teens make photos and cover photos and even share their photos in terms of selfies to get appreciation from their online Facebook community. They also share videos on the social messaging app and further do many other activates in the name of socializing that really make a concern to the parents to the fullest.

Also Read: Mark Zuckerberg: The Founder & CEO of World’s Biggest Social Network

Facebook could be dangerous for teens

Using Facebook is not the bad thing at all, but when it comes to using the messenger for negative purposes really put teens into real trouble. The use of state of the art tools of the social messaging app Facebook would be vulnerable for the safety of the teens.

Young kids and teens mostly share their compromised videos and photos on the Facebook profile and when this shared multimedia went viral, then a number of online monsters try to approach them online.

Young kids and teens send and receive text messages, chat conversations, audio and video calls, shared media as photos and videos, and Facebook Voice messages.

Also Read: Randall L. Stephenson – A Dazzling Star In The World Of Telecommunication

 Moreover, cyber predators such as stalkers, and sexual predators pretend as they want to be their lovers or friends and then ask them for real-life meetings. So, young kids and teens often rapped online and reportedly been raped and molested.

However, cyberbullying factor is one of the most threatening and teens number of times bullied online and got depression and anxiety. Furthermore, young teens are also getting involved willingly into sexting, blind dates, and become obsessed with the social media app.

That’s why parents have to realize what they should do to monitor the Facebook profile to the fullest to get to know what kids and teens are doing on the messenger and to whom they are having conversations and what sort of social media app privacy options they have used. So, they can use Facebook private profile viewer in terms of Facebook spy app. Therefore, Parents have to get services of a cell phone monitoring apps to spy on the Facebook instant messaging app.

Installation of app on smartphones

You just need to subscribe for the phone spy software and you will receive an email that gives you the credentials. Then you just need to get physical access to the target device and then install the cell phone spy app and when you have done it successfully then activate it on the target device.

Moreover, you just need to use the credentials and get access to the online control panel of the mobile phone spy app and then visit the Facebook spy app features that will give you complete access to monitoring tools to view the complete profile and activities of teens on Facebook with a complete time stamp.

IM’s social media

You can monitor and view Facebook instant messenger logs such as text messages, chat conversations, audio, and video conversations, shared media files such as photos and videos, and last but not least Facebook Voice calls.

Live Facebook screen recording

You can do the live screen recording of the target cell phone screen when the messenger is being used by the target person and you can make short videos that you can view by getting access to the online control panel and get to know the details.

Also Read: Eric S. Yuan : CEO & Founder of Zoom Video Communications, ‘A Service That Connects People’

Keylogger

You can view Keystrokes applied to the target device such as password keystrokes, messenger keystrokes, messages keystrokes and others. Once you have got it you can get access to the target Facebook account on the target phone and can view the information on the Facebook profile.

Conclusion:

The Facebook private profile can be viewed via android spy software and you can use it as a Facebook private profile viewer, and get to know the activities.

ION Energy

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

Leave a Comment / start-up, Tech Story / By

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.

keka

Vijay Yalamanchili : The Founder of the Best Payroll and HR Software in India, ‘Keka’

Leave a Comment / Founder, India, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

We are often ambushed by many software companies in the market while searching for the best. Be it a tool for project management, your digital assistance, or an HR software, we often find ourselves in a huge dilemma. So, to reduce one of your conundrums, YourTechStory brings to you the flabbergasting story of Keka, the best HR software in India till date.

Vijay Yalamanchili, the founder of Keka, solely founded the company out of sheer disappointment and frustration from working with HR software not up to the mark. He found that the HR software available in the market have a very poor user interface, which leads to a substandard experience for both the HR and the employees. So, to contribute to the HR community of India, Yalamanchili built the software, Keka HR in 2015. Apart from HR software, Keka also has payroll software, applicant tracking software and much more.

Early Life and Career of Yalamanchili

Yalamanchili is mainly a product designer and architect by profession. He pursued his B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from JNTUH College of Engineering, followed by an MS from the University of Delaware.

Vijay Yalamanchili keka
Image Source: iamwire.com

After completing his MS, Yalamanchili started working with Microsoft in 2003 as a Software Development Engineer. He worked there only for three months.

In August 2006, he co-founded Fotolink Media, a visual image search platform used for product marketing by brands using mobile devices like mediums. It was one of the first mobile start-ups in India. He left the company after 4.5 years and founded Ramp India in 2006. The company was developed to provide solutions and build products for start-ups in India. After working in Ramp with a strong architectural team and delivering over 30+ products, Yalamanchili founded Technovert in July 2012. The zeal for excelling in the world of technology made Yalamanchili establish software solution companies one after the other. He co-founded Technovert with Sashi Pagadala. The company provides services in India, USA and Dallas.

By this time, Yalamanchili suffered enough with the HR software and founded Keka HR in 2015. It’s a Hyderabad based start-up which put a significant impact on the market when it got released, as it provided a better user experience to people.

Strategies to Outdo the Competitors

By the time Yalamanchili founded Keka, he was experienced enough to understand the major flaws in the other HR software. So, his main focus was on improving quality.

Yalamanchili’s first target was to make the user experience better because if the user experience degrades, after a point of time, it would ultimately ruin the brand name, which had already happened to all the other HR software out there.

Another major fault that Yalamanchili noticed in other HR software was the tracking of attendance. No existing software before Keka directly synced biometric devices to attendance log. Hence, it was very tiresome for the HRs to update it manually in the web browser. Keka got a very big bonus point by adding this feature. Though it took almost 1.5 years to build a software like this, it paid off well.

Keka also implemented well-designed security and privacy features that allowed the customer to get notified even if a Keka Customer representative is accessing their account. So, Keka itself also cannot sign in to customer’s account without their consent.

Instead of running behind more customers, Keka invested more time with its existing customers to improve their products until and unless it gave a smooth performance. It is very important to make the customers feel worthy and important because if they feel so, the scale will rise up automatically.

Success of Keka

It is nearly unbelievable that a company which acquired around 450 clients in less than a year is self-funded, given that Keka includes reputed clients like Godrej, Honda, Saavn and ClearTax. Keka is the recipient of the Hottest Start-up of Hyderabad Award and is in Top 3 in terms of bagging new customers with a comparatively smaller team with respect to its competitors.

Keka wanted to go old school, and hence, it tried becoming self-independent which turned out to be surprisingly successful. The company wanted to develop software with a touch of Indian style, and hence, they named it ‘Keka’ which means awesome in a native South Indian dialect. And, guess what? It just proved to be worthy of the name since the very first day.

discord

Jason Citron : A Video Game Lover and the Founder of the Digital Distribution Platform Discord

Leave a Comment / Founder, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

The video game industry is vast and is growing even more through online gaming and live game streaming. Over a decade ago, people could only play games on the desktops or gaming consoles. But now, they can play games online with other gamers as well. While playing, they can even talk to each other in real-time. This is called the real evolution of technology. Earlier, the gamers made the use of other expensive chat apps, like TeamSpeak, Mumble, and Ventrilo to communicate through chat at the time, they played games. But soon, they got their hands on more convenient and a lighter platform, i.e. Discord.

Discord is a VoIP application that Jason Citron, an American developer and entrepreneur, developed for the video gaming community. With Discord, the gamers are capable of sending and receiving texts, images, videos and communicate, while playing a game using the internet in real-time.

Early Life

Jason Citron, the founder and CEO of Discord, had always been a video game lover. His father, and his grandfather, both were businessmen. His first encounter with video games was through one of his childhood friends, who introduced him to NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). Later, when in middle school, in Florida, he opted for computers as one of his subjects in school. One of his friends at school was good at fundamentals of QBASIC and taught him the basics of programming.

Jason Citron
Image Source: vox.com

Inspired by his father, he also aspired to be an entrepreneur. By the time he was 13, he had learned a lot about computers and started teaching the basics of computers to people older than him and charged them a small amount of fee. When he was sixteen, he started part-time freelancing and wrote codes for different companies.

Since, he had always been into gaming and coding, after completing his graduation from the Full Sail University in Florida, he started working for a game company, where he worked on a gaming console in San Rafael. Meanwhile, he moved to a new apartment where he lived with the students of the University of California, Berkeley, where he got to meet Rohan Relan. Rohan’s uncle, Peter, was the owner of an incubator called YouWeb that supported mobile and gaming-focused businesses.

Building Aurora Feint; The First Startup

As Citron was into starting his own business, he met Peter and joined his company as one of the developers. At the incubator, he started working on a new iPhone game and built a company named Aurora Feint along with a fellow developer Danielle Cassley.

With the launch of the iPhone in 2007, Jason Citron got the opportunity to build new games that would work with the small screens. He focussed on creating games based on RPG and puzzles. The company launched the first version of Aurora Feint for free to use for iOS during the Christmas in 2008. The game was a success but was not making any revenues. Citron was looking for a better business model but had no clue how to work with newly built iPhones.

After just a few months the game reached one million people, but still, there was nothing that would pay back Citron and his company.

Founding OpenFeint

One day, while discussing with the YouWeb Owner Peter, Citron realised that the iPhone did not have Xbox live in it, but their Aurora Feint 2 did have a similar feature. It was the kind of first asynchronous MMOG (massively multiplayer online game). So they decided to build a separate SDK that other platform could integrate and use.

In February 2009, Citron launched the beta version of the software at TechCrunch, where he got to showcase it in front of hundreds of developers. This way, the software also got hundreds of signups, and thus, he was able to raise the money to produce the next version of the product. The software was free, but the company monetize the sale through revenue sharing, mobile storefronts, and game features.

The company carried out its first round of funding at the end of 2009, which was led by DeNA in Japan and raised $6 million. In the second round of funding, the company raised $5 million. By 2010, the company had more than 10 million users registered on the network. In October 2010, Intel Capital also invested a $3 million in the company. The next year, Japanese company GREE, Inc. acquired OpenFeint for a whopping amount of US$104 million.

The Journey from Hammer and Chisel to Discord

After selling the company, Jason Citron started another startup named Hammer and Chisel, a game development company, that launched its first game named Fates Forever, in 2014. Citron tried to launch the game as the Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), but due to the lack of good communication methods, it could not be commercially successful. This led Cistron to develop a new chat service, that would help people to chat in real-time while playing video games online.

Citron was able to get a sufficient amount of funding from YouWeb, Benchmark capital and Tencent for the development. Finally, he launched the first version of the product in May 2015, with the name Discord. Soon, the platform was famous and was used by the esports, LAN tournament gamers, and by the Twitch.tv streamers. In January 2016, the company received an investment of worth $20 million. In the same year, the growth rate for the software had reached a million users per month. By the end of the year, the software had registered 25 million users worldwide, and in December 2017, it recognised a total 90 million users, subscribed to the platform and raised $50 million by December.

By the end of 2018, the company valued at $2 billion and raised an additional $150 million, in a round of funding, led by Greenoaks Capital. In May 2019, the company announced that it has more than 250 million users across the world, who use the software.

The reason behind the success of Discord has been the consistent hard work of Jason Citron, and the skills, as an entrepreneur he possessed in his genes.