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Brains Behind Great Technology Companies

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PCQ Bureau
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The beautiful graphical user interface you see every day when you switch on your PC, the music you listen to every day, or even the touch interface mobile or tablet you are thinking to buy --one man is behind all this.

Apple: Steve Jobs

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This man has repeatedly redefined how we use technology in our daily life. His impact on personal computing is tremendous. He was pivotal in churning products that are regarded as benchmarks in their segments and creating segments himself with various products. iPod, iPad, iPhone have all become objects of desire. From Mac that made creative work possible on a PC to iPod that redefined personal music players, from iPhone that made touch interface in mobile phones so popular that now every other company is trying to imitate, to more recent iPad which is a segment creator itself, the story of Jobs is phenomenal. With his friend Steve Woziak, Job built first Apple Computer in 1976, and founded Apple Corporation. Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985 to form successful animation company Pixar. He came back in 1996 and pushed Apple to new heights.

Windows XP, Windows 7, Word, Excel, Power Point --few members of the very long list of software we use almost every day. Bill Gates, the brain behind. Here is the story of the Microsoft Man.

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Microsoft: Bill Gates

Regarded as poster boy of Microsoft, Bill Gates with his childhood friend and fellow computer programmer Paul Allan founded Microsoft in April 4, 1975. When he was in the eighth grade at Lakeside School, Gates took interest in programming BASIC. This started when a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer was made available for school students. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was so fascinated with computers that he along with his friends exploited bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time of PDP-10 at Computer Center Corporation (CCC). In January 1975, Popular

What is unique about Dell which could be seen as just another PC assembler is the freedom it provides to customer. From their site, you can not only buy your product but also customize it according to your need. Here is the story of the brain behind.

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Dell: Michael Dell

When Dell got his first computer Apple 11, he promptly disassembled it to find out what was inside it and how it worked. Besides the high level of technical curiosity, Dell also possessed a great business mind. In Memorial High School, Houston, he used to sell subscriptions to the Houston Post in the summer. While making cold calls, Dell observed that newlyweds and people moving into new homes were most likely to buy a subscription. He targeted this demographic group by collecting names from marriage and mortgage applications. Dell earned $18,000 that year. While a freshman pre-med student at the University of Texas at Austin, Dell started an informal business putting together and selling upgrade kits for personal computers in room 2713 of the Dobie Center residential building. This was the beginning of what turned into a multi billion business under his guidance.

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Importance of a database is unquestionable and one of the frontrunners in this domain is Oracle. So next time you contact a call center you may end up giving information that would be stored in an Oracle database via CRM application.

Oracle: Lawrence J Ellison

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Elison began Oracle Corporation with a $1200 investment in 1977. Today he is the third wealthiest American citizen, with an estimated worth of $33 billion. With difficult childhood, one can surely say that he is a self made man. Ellison was inspired by the paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database systems called "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks." In 1977, he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL). In 1979, the company was renamed Relational Software Inc, later renamed Oracle after the flagship product Oracle database. He had heard about the IBM System R database, also based on Codd's theories, and wanted Oracle to be compatible with it. But IBM made this impossible by refusing to share System R's code. The initial release of Oracle was Oracle 2; there was no Oracle 1.

To be in market for more than a decade with consistent position is next to impossible. what is needed for survival is constant change from one business domain to another and most importantly choosing the correct business to move onto.

IBM: Thomas J Watson Jr

There was a time when computing was synonymous with IBM. Be it PC or the mainframe, it was IBM who drove both the technology and the marketplace. But who built IBM to the super power that it was? It was Thomas J Watson Jr -chairman and chief executive officer of IBM. It was Watson Jr who led the company from the age of mechanical tabulators and hyper writers into computer era. It was Watson, who in spite of believing that the worldwide market of PCs would be limited, still led the product to be produced.

Lous V Gerstner Jr

When IBM was in doldrums, operating costs were high and productivity was low. It was Lous V Gerstner Jr who came to rescue. He took over as chairman and chief executive officer of IBM on April 1, 1993. Since then, IBM has shown a steep growth with company restoring its lost glory. Gerstner is credited with one of the most successful businesses revival in history.

With misconception of being just a printer company, HP though very strong in printer business has much more to it than printers. And here is how it all started

HP: William R. Hewlett

David Packard

You don't have to be a millionaire to create a huge multinational conglomerate. You just need $538 of capital, and a shabby cottage behind your house for R&D. David Packard and William R Hewett --two youngsters fresh from an electrical engineering course started one of the most popular companies in the world today on January 1, 1939. The company's name was interestingly decided by the toss of a coin. Though the pair started off by creating a radio oscillator, and later had more innovations up their sleeves, they are better known as keen businessman. This is because with every decade, they expanded their business empire through acquisitions, joint ventures, and new start-ups. They set foot in microwave device in 1940s. The 50s saw them entering the plotter business by acquiring a company called F L Moseley. The 70s said good bye to slide rules as HP introduced the first calculator. HP entered the PC market in 80s. It also introduced its first Inkjet and Laserjet printers in this period.

If you know bit about computers then you would be familiar with slogan 'Intel Inside'. Most of the machines that you have ever come across were powered by Intel Chip. Who is behind this company that touches you almost every day

Intel: Gordon Moore

Moor is best known for the famous 'Moor Law'. He started off in Intel by serving as Executive Vice President until 1975 when he became President. In April 1979, Dr Moore became Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, holding that position until April 1987, when he became Chairman of the Board. He was named Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation in 1997.

Robert Noyce

From his young age Noyce was exceptional. In 1940, when Noyce was just 12, he built a boy-sized aircraft with his brother, which they used to fly from the roof. Later he built a radio from scratch and motorized his sled by welding a propeller and an engine from an old washing machine to the back of it. While an undergraduate, Noyce attended a physics course of the professor Grant Gale and was fascinated by the physics. Gale got hold of two of the very first transistors ever to come out of Bell Labs and showed them off to his class and Noyce was hooked. Noyce and Gordon E. Moore founded Intel in 1968 when they left Fairchild Semiconductor with Arthur Rock.

Andrew Grove

After Moore, Andy is the most familiar name from Intel. During the dizzy days of Intel's rapid climb as the leading microprocessor manufacturer, it was Grove who was help of operations. And Grove didn't stick to just icroprocessors. During his stewardship, Intel made successful forays into many areas, including networking.

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