GrapeCity

Last updated
GrapeCity
Company type Private
Industry Software services
Founded1980
FounderPaul Broman
Headquarters
Sendai
,
Japan
Key people
Paul Broman
(Honorary Chairman, Founder)
Daniel Fanger
(Chairman)
Naoyuki Baba
(President)
Joshua Broman
(CCO)
Products Developer Tools
School Management System
Education Curriculums
Services Information technology consulting
Digital Media Production Services
Website https://www.grapecity.com/

GrapeCity, Inc. is a privately held, multinational software corporation based in Sendai, Japan, that develops software products and provides outsourced product development services, consulting services, software, and Customer relationship management services. [1] GrapeCity also has established WINEstudios, a media design and digital production facility in Japan.[ citation needed ]

Contents

GrapeCity's major office locations are in the United States, Japan, India, China, South Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam and Albania.

Corporate history

Foundation

GrapeCity, formerly Bunka Orient Corporation, was founded in Miyagi prefecture, Japan in 1980 by Paul Broman. The company was established to provide software solutions for the emerging personal computer market in Japan. [2]

Paul Broman worked with Daniel Fanger, now Chairman of GrapeCity and Principal of MeySen Academy, [3] and Nobuo Iwasa to turn Bunka Orient Corporation into a software development company.

Original products

LeySer School Management Software

The company's first software product was LeySer Services for school management, which Paul Broman used to help run the MeySen Academy and KeiMei Elementary School, which he founded in the 1970s. Having sent some of his teachers to learn programming, he then directed them in creating software to support the accounting and reporting needs of his schools. Later, they sold the software to other schools through what was still known as Bunka Orient Corporation.[ citation needed ]

Localization of Developer Tools

The company expanded into a range of other software products and services, beginning by localizing developer tools for the Japanese market, another empty niche they discovered when developing LeySer Services. Beginning in 1993, they grouped these localized tools together and resold them as their Power Tools line. [4]

Localized tools included:

  • PowerTCP Tools (1999) [5]
  • JClass (2002) [6] and JProbe (2007) [7] Java(TM) Components
  • LEADTOOLS Imaging Toolkits [8]
  • FarPoint Spread (1999) [9]

Timeline

YearLocationEvent
1980JapanBunka Orient Company Ltd. founded in Sendai.
1988China Xi'an Orient Software established.
1990Japan Kantou business office established in Saitama Prefecture.
1993China Shanghai Orient established.
1996IndiaBunka Orient India established in New Delhi.
1999Japan Kansai business office established in Osaka Prefecture.
2000USABunka Orient USA established in Seattle.
2000MongoliaBunka Orient Mongolia established in Ulaanbaatar.
2001JapanGrapeCity, Inc. formed in Sendai.
2002globalBunka Orient renamed GrapeCity.
2003JapanGrapeCity headquarters built in Sendai.
2004JapanGrapeCity Nagoya business office established in Aichi Prefecture.
2004VietnamGrapeCity Vietnam established in Hanoi.
2005IndiaGrapeCity India Noida Complex opens near New Delhi. [10]
2005JapanGrapeCity WINEstudios Harajuku established in Tokyo.
2006MalaysiaGrapeCity Inc. office opened in Selangor.
2006AustraliaGrapeCity Australia established in Sydney.
2006JapanGrapeCity WINEstudios established in Sendai.
2008USAAcquired Data Dynamics, Ltd., in Columbus, Ohio. [11]
2009USAAcquired FarPoint Technologies in Morrisville, North Carolina. [12]
2009EnglandData Dynamics opens West Sussex office. [13]

Name change

Originally named Bunka Orient Corporation when it was founded in 1980, the company found that its name was often confused with other entities with the same acronym when it expanded into China and India. The company was renamed GrapeCity in 2002. [14]

In 2005, when GrapeCity established a media design and digital production facility, they established WINEstudios. [15]

Acquisitions

One of the developer tools that GrapeCity localized for Japanese programmers was ActiveReports from Data Dynamics. In addition to localizing the user interface and documentation, GrapeCity performed quality testing for Japanese usage of the product and requested new features. After a long association with the company, in October, 2008, GrapeCity announced their acquisition of Data Dynamics, in Columbus, Ohio. [11]

Another of the developer tools that GrapeCity localized was Spread from FarPoint Technologies. In a similar move, after long association with the company, they announced their acquisition of FarPoint Technologies in Morrisville, North Carolina, September, 2009. [16]

In 2012, GrapeCity also completed the acquisition of ComponentOne in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which includes the developer tools ComponentOne Studio, a .NET tookit for Visual Studio; Wijmo, a set of controls for JavaScript and HTML5, including AngularJS and KnockoutJS; and Xuni, a native mobile control collection for Xamarin.Forms, iOS, WindowsPhone, and Android.

Divisions

LeySer School Management System

The LeySer school management system division of GrapeCity is responsible for all software and services around managing private educational institutions in Japan. Key modules of the system include accounting, payroll, tuition management and asset management. The software started out in 1980 as a set of accounting tools and over the years has evolved from the earliest MS-DOS version to Microsoft Windows, and today it is a set of software based on the .NET Framework platform.

Developer Tools

The Developer Tools division is one of the primary business units of the company bringing in roughly 30% of the company revenues. In addition to developing and marketing its own products, in Japan GrapeCity’s Developer Tools division localizes, sells, and supports products made by other software vendors.

In the US and the rest of the world market, since acquiring Data Dynamics and FarPoint, GrapeCity has consolidated its line of developer tools around ComponentOne, FarPoint Spread, ActiveReports, and Data Dynamics Analysis. These products provide user interface, spreadsheet, reporting, and analysis functionality to software developers using the Microsoft platform and developer tools.

GrapeCity Global Services

The GrapeCity Global Services (GGS) division provides custom software development, outsourced product development, and software implementation consulting services to mid-sized through enterprise-level customers.

Services include ERP (enterprise resource planning), Microsoft SharePoint, Business Intelligence, eCommerce, trading systems, information portals, inventory systems, supply chain systems, banking systems, (customer relationship management), financial and accounting packages, and workflow management. The GGS division also provides software services and add-on products for CDC Pivotal CRM and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. [17]

The GGS division consists of two geographical business units, one in the United States and the other in China.

WINEstudios Digital Media Production and Design

The WINEstudios production and design company established by GrapeCity creates features, programs, commercials, music videos, and special presentations. They design computer graphics using CGI applications including Softimage XSI, Autodesk Maya, After Effects, Combustion, and Boujou. WINEstudios also designs corporate logos, brochures, and marketing tools.

The facility has a sound stage, a motion capture studio, a chromakey studio, an editing suite, and an audio suite. [18]

GrapeSEED

GrapeSEED has its roots in the Miyagi MeySen Academy, [19] a private preschool education organization in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. MeySen is a preschool English education system.

ActiveReports Server

GrapeCity announced the launch of ActiveReports Server on September 13, 2011. [20] ActiveReports Server is a Web-based self-service reporting solution for business users, enabling them to design and deliver ad hoc reports from within their Web browsers. ActiveReports Server also includes a secure, scalable storage with report scheduling and distribution capabilities and a Web-based management interface for IT administrators. Software developers can use the ActiveReports Server SDK to embed the ad hoc report designer and other features into their own applications.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Access</span> Database manager part of the Microsoft 365 package

Microsoft Access is a database management system (DBMS) from Microsoft that combines the relational Access Database Engine (ACE) with a graphical user interface and software-development tools. It is a member of the Microsoft 365 suite of applications, included in the Professional and higher editions or sold separately.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taligent</span> Software company (1992–1998)

Taligent Inc. was an American software company. Based on the Pink object-oriented operating system conceived by Apple in 1988, Taligent Inc. was incorporated as an Apple/IBM partnership in 1992, and was dissolved into IBM in 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BEA Systems</span> Defunct American software corporation

BEA Systems, Inc. was a company that specialized in enterprise infrastructure software products, which was wholly acquired by Oracle Corporation on April 29, 2008.

Cincom Systems, Inc., is a privately held multinational computer technology corporation founded in 1968 by Tom Nies, Tom Richley, and Claude Bogardus.

Business intelligence software is a type of application software designed to retrieve, analyze, transform and report data for business intelligence. The applications generally read data that has been previously stored, often - though not necessarily - in a data warehouse or data mart.

Oracle Fusion Middleware consists of several software products from Oracle Corporation. FMW spans multiple services, including Java EE and developer tools, integration services, business intelligence, collaboration, and content management. FMW depends on open standards such as BPEL, SOAP, XML and JMS.

Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) is an identity management (IdM) product offered by Microsoft. It is a service that aggregates identity-related information from multiple data-sources. The goal of MIIS is to provide organizations with a unified view of a user's/resources identity across the heterogeneous enterprise and provide methods to automate routine tasks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rogue Wave Software</span> American software company

Rogue Wave Software was an American software development company based in Louisville, Colorado. It provided cross-platform software development tools and embedded components for parallel, data-intensive, and other high-performance computing (HPC) applications.

Build automation is the practice of building software systems in a relatively unattended fashion. The build is configured to run with minimized or no software developer interaction and without using a developer's personal computer. Build automation encompasses the act of configuring the build system as well the resulting system itself.

IBM App Connect Enterprise (abbreviated as IBM ACE, formerly known as IBM Integration Bus, WebSphere Message Broker, WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker, WebSphere MQSeries Integrator and started life as MQSeries Systems Integrator. App Connect IBM's integration software offering, allowing business information to flow between disparate applications across multiple hardware and software platforms. Rules can be applied to the data flowing through user-authored integrations to route and transform the information. The product can be used as an Enterprise Service Bus supplying a communication channel between applications and services in a service-oriented architecture. App Connect from V11 supports container native deployments with highly optimised container start-up times.

Resource Kit is a term used by Microsoft for a set of software resources and documentation released for their software products, but which is not part of that product. Resource kits offer supplementary resources such as technical guidance, compatibility and troubleshooting information, management, support, maintenance and deployment guides and multipurpose useful administrative utilities, which are available separately.

Panorama Software is a Canadian software and consulting company specializing in business intelligence. The company was founded by Rony Ross in Israel in 1993; it relocated its headquarters to Toronto, Canada in 2003. Panorama sold its online analytical processing (OLAP) technology to Microsoft in 1996, which was built into Microsoft OLAP Services and later SQL Server Analysis Services, an integrated component of Microsoft SQL Server.

JasperReports is an open source Java reporting tool that can write to a variety of targets, such as: screen, a printer, into PDF, HTML, Microsoft Excel, RTF, ODT, comma-separated values (CSV), XSL, or XML files.

Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. is an American computer software company that develops, manufactures, licenses and supports products and services related to software through several product divisions. It was founded in 1993, went public in 2000 and private in 2007, and became a division of Idera, Inc. in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ActiveReports</span> Data Visualization tool for .NET application developers

ActiveReports is a .NET reporting tool used by developers of .NET, and ASP.NET/JavaScript applications. It was originally developed by Data Dynamics, which was then acquired by GrapeCity. It is written in managed C# code and allows Visual Studio programmers to leverage their knowledge of C# or Visual Basic.NET when programming with ActiveReports.

Trados Studio is a computer-assisted translation software tool which provides a comprehensive platform for translation tasks, including editing, reviewing, and project management. It is available both as a local desktop tool or online. Trados, owned by RWS, also provides a suite of intelligent machine translation products.

InRule Technology is a software company that offers Business Rule Management System (BRMS) enterprise software products.

Perforce Software, Inc. is an American developer of software used for developing and running applications, including version control software, web-based repository management, developer collaboration, application lifecycle management, web application servers, debugging tools, platform automation, and agile planning software.

GrapeSEED is a research-based oral language acquisition and critical listening program for teachers that allows students to obtain the English language naturally. This natural approach, developed by Stephen Krashen, a linguist and researcher in the fields of second-language acquisition and bilingual education, and Tracy D. Terrell, an education theorist, is intended to give language learners the ability to "communicate with native speakers of the target language" by having students, who are taught in a classroom setting, first comprehend the language, and then "Speech production emerges as the acquisition process progresses."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Power Platform</span> Family of business software products

Microsoft Power Platform is a collection of low-code development tools that allows users to build custom business applications, automate workflows, and analyze data. It also offers integration with GitHub, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams, among other Microsoft and third-party applications.

References

  1. ↑ "Home". grapecity.com.
  2. ↑ "GrapeCity Developer Solutions | .NET Controls | .NET Reports | JavaScript Controls | Spreadsheets | Document APIs". GrapeCity. Retrieved 2022-11-20.
  3. ↑ Daniel Fanger, Principal of MeySen Academy
  4. ↑ "Release of Japanese version of LEADTOOLS 14 as part of its PowerTools line1". Archived from the original on 2009-02-14. Retrieved 2009-12-15.
  5. ↑ PowerTCP Tools
  6. ↑ JClass [usurped]
  7. ↑ JProbe
  8. ↑ LEADTOOLS Imaging Toolkits
  9. ↑ FarPoint Spread
  10. ↑ GrapeCity India opens Noida Complex
  11. 1 2 GrapeCity Acquires Data Dynamics Archived 2011-06-06 at the Wayback Machine
  12. ↑ GrapeCity Acquires FarPoint Technologies
  13. ↑ GrapeCity-Data Dynamics Expands into Europe
  14. ↑ Bunka Orient India Changes Name to GrapeCity India
  15. ↑ Aycinena, Peggy (2006-02-01). "Profile: GrapeCity, the Bullet Train Personified". Visual Studio Magazine. Retrieved 2022-11-20.
  16. ↑ "GrapeCity Acquires FarPoint Technologies".
  17. ↑ Yahoo Widgets by GrapeCity
  18. ↑ Balance Studios visits WINEstudios in Sendai, Japan
  19. ↑ Miyagi MeySen Academy
  20. ↑ GrapeCity announces ActiveReports Server for Web-based Self-Service Reporting
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.