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Edward M. Esber, Jr. | |
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Born | 1952 Cleveland, Ohio, US |
Edward M. Esber, Jr. (born 1952) is semi-retired in Park City, Utah. Ed spends his time helping the State of Utah, Utah Law enforcement and the Silicon Slopes entrepreneur community in Utah. [1]
As a PC industry veteran, he pioneered the marketing and distribution of personal computer productivity software. Afterwards, he did seminal work on the integration of computers and multimedia; the integration of computers, toys and learning; the integration of computers, communication and telephony; the mobilization of email and internet access and personal computer mobility. He served on the boards of companies that introduced the first hard disk add on card for PCs, the first MP3 player, the first DVR and the first tablet computer.
Esber graduated with a BS computer engineering degree from Case Institute of Technology in 1974. He later earned a MS in electrical engineering from Syracuse University while working with IBM in 1976. [2] He then went on to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School, in 1978.
Esber was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the oldest of eight children.
He worked as an engineer/programmer in IBM's System Product Division and in product marketing at Texas Instruments [3] Personal Computer and Consumer Products Division.
In 1979, Dan Flystra recruited Esber to run worldwide sales and marketing for Personal Software (later renamed VisiCorp). [4] While there, he helped manage distribution of the first micro-software program, Visicalc. [4] VisiCalc was credited with sparking the explosive growth of Apple Computer and the beginning of the Personal Computer Software revolution.
Esber took over Ashton-Tate in 1985. [5] During his time as CEO, Ashton-Tate acquired several companies, including Decision Resources and MultiMate. Ashton-Tate grew from $40 million in revenue to over $300 million during his tenure.
While at Ashton-Tate, Esber had several strategic merger discussions with the likes of Lotus and Microsoft which were all rejected by the board. Ultimately, he initiated the company's sale to Borland.
In May 1990, he stepped down as Chairman over disagreements on strategy, mergers and acquisitions with the board.
In 1994, he was appointed CEO of Creative Labs. [6]
Esber was a founder and CEO of a Computer Toys company called Creative Insights and the CEO of SoloPoint, [7] a telephony products company.
Esber was a founding member in 1997 of The Angels Forum, a professional, Silicon Valley based group of angel investors. He also is a member of the management team of The Halo Funds. [8] [9]
Esber is currently[ when? ] helping the State of Utah continue its explosive growth by serving on the Utah Capital Investment Corporation, the Utah Technology Initiative Advisory Board and past member of the Utah Small Business Growth Initiative Board. He also serves as the Chairman of the Utah 1033 Foundation [10] which provides financial support for the families of Utah law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty and the Summit County Sheriff's Citizen's Advisory Board.
Esber currently sits on the boards of PanTerra Networks and is co-chair of the emeriti trustee committee of Case Western Reserve University. In the past Esber has served on the boards of Activision, Ashton Tate, Quantum Corporation, SONICblue, Pansophic Systems, Integrated Circuits System Technology and many private companies. [15] [16]
Borland Software Corporation was a computing technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad, and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was developing and selling software development and software deployment products. Borland was first headquartered in Scotts Valley, California, then in Cupertino, California, and then in Austin, Texas. In 2009, the company became a full subsidiary of the British firm Micro Focus International plc. In 2023, Micro Focus was acquired by Canadian firm OpenText, which later absorbed Borland's portfolio into its application delivery management division.
Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compatible computers, being the second company after Columbia Data Products to legally reverse engineer the BIOS of the IBM Personal Computer. It rose to become the largest supplier of PC systems during the 1990s before being overtaken by Dell in 2001. Struggling to keep up in the price wars against Dell, as well as with a risky acquisition of DEC, Compaq was acquired for US$25 billion by HP in 2002. The Compaq brand remained in use by HP for lower-end systems until 2013 when it was discontinued. Since 2013, the brand is currently licensed to third parties for use on electronics in Brazil and India.
Daniel Singer Bricklin is an American businessman and engineer who is the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. He also founded Software Garden, Inc., of which he is currently president, and Trellix, which he left in 2004. He currently serves as the chief technology officer of Alpha Software.
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Ashton-Tate Corporation was a US-based software company best known for developing the popular dBASE database application and later acquiring Framework from the Forefront Corporation and MultiMate from Multimate International. It grew from a small garage-based company to become a multinational corporation. Once one of the "Big Three" software companies, which included Microsoft and Lotus, the company stumbled in the late 1980s and was sold to Borland in September 1991.
CA Technologies, Inc., formerly Computer Associates International, Inc., and CA, Inc., was an American multinational enterprise software developer and publisher that existed from 1976 to 2018. CA grew to rank as one of the largest independent software corporations in the world, and at one point was the second largest. The company created systems software that ran in IBM mainframe, distributed computing, virtual machine, and cloud computing environments.
Convergent Technologies, Inc., was an American computer company formed by a small group of people who left Intel Corporation and Xerox PARC in 1979. Among the founders were CEO Allen Michels, VP Engineering Bob Garrow, head of marketing Kal Hubler, and operating system architect Ben Wegbreit. Convergent was primarily an OEM vendor with their computers resold by other manufacturers such as ADP, AT&T, Burroughs, Four-Phase Systems, Gould, Mohawk, Monroe Data Systems, NCR, and Prime. The company was purchased by Unisys in 1988.
Visi On is a graphical user interface (GUI)-based operating environment program for IBM compatible personal computers running MS-DOS. Visi On was developed by VisiCorp. It was one of the first GUIs on a personal computer. Visi On was never popular, as it had steep minimum system requirements for its day, but it was influential in the development of later GUIs like Microsoft Windows.
VisiCorp was an early personal computer software publisher. Its most famous products were Microchess, Visi On and VisiCalc.
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Creative Technology Ltd., or Creative Labs Pte Ltd., is a Singaporean multinational technology company. The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia and personal digital entertainment products. It also partners with mainboard manufacturers and laptop brands to embed its Sound Blaster technology on their products.
TouchWave, Inc., was a privately held Palo Alto, California IP-telephony network switch provider founded in 1997. TouchWave developed a product line called WebSwitch that was designed to replace traditional private telephone exchange systems in small-to-medium-sized companies. WebSwitch was part of a phone system that incorporates communication features provided by the Internet. The rapid success of TouchWave was memorialized with awards and an acquisition by Ericsson Communications for $46M two years after TouchWave was founded. Ericsson continued the TouchWave product line under the name WebCom, but its efforts have been viewed as less than successful.
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