16 Techies Who Wrote Business History of the Century

by Leplan on January 26th, 2010

Every individual dreams of doing something for the society, and in today’s technologically boomed world numerous businesses start and fail. But below is such elite list of individuals those who used information technology and have named themselves in the business history. In one way or the other, they have contributed to the society and to themselves in such way that they will be remembered for many years to come. And we start off with:

1. Bill Gates (Microsoft)

Source : www.suno.edu

Bill Gates is one such name in the planet, who people easily say this guy redefined the business world with use of technology. Born on Oct 28, 1955 is an American business person and popularly known for his software company Microsoft. As a co-founder of the most popular software company, has set all kind of records with his consistent appearance in the top 10 list of world’s wealthiest people. He revolutionalized personal computer’s world with his windows operating systems which is still the most popular operating system. Today Microsoft has hold 90% of personal PC on earth and the credit go to none other than Bill.

2. Steve Jobs & 3. Steve Woiznaik (Apple):

Source: cache.gawker.com

Steve Wozniak is co-founder of Apple and together with Steve Jobs had invented the first ready-made personalcomputer. Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs is an American businessman, and the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. They are such personals who changed the way we look looked at computer and made us believe that computers can be used for personal use. Steve Jobs is credited as the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven graphical user interface.

Jobs’ history in business has contributed greatly to the myths of the idiosyncratic, individualistic Silicon Valley entrepreneur, emphasizing the importance of design and understanding the crucial role aesthetics play in public appeal. Their efforts were rewarded when ‘The Apple II’ gained much popularity, eventually becoming one of the best selling personal computers of the 1970s and early 1980s. Then there has been no looking behind for them. Today, Apple Inc has more than 100 products in the field of Smartphone, Mobile App Store, OS, Mobile Ad, and Online Music and so on and has quite extensive grab hold of the information technology market.

4. Sergey Brin & 5. Larry Page (Google)

Source: www.redherring.com

Today Google is one such name in the internet market that has rephrased term “Web Search” to “Google It” and thecredit goes to Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Sergey Brin is a Russian-American computer scientist and Lawrence Edward “Larry”, American computer scientist who co-founded Google Inc which is now the world’s biggest Internet Company.

In 2009, both of them were enlisted in the richest person in the world. Google is the name that redefined web search and placed them way ahead as Search Engine Giants and now with 150 products it’s amongst the web -technology leader in the industry.

The company has lately entered into Mobile space with Android OS, which is regarded as one of the best Open Source Products available in the Tech Industry.

6. Linus Torvalds (Linux)

Source: www.wired.com

Linus Benedict Torvalds born on Dec 28, 1969 is a Finnish software engineer is popular for his development of LinuxKernel. Though it is said that only 2% of today’s Linux kernel was written by him but his idea simple has caused a revolution in the world of computers.

Today, Linux is the only alternative to proprietary operating systems and has been adopted worldwide primarily as a server platform. This has enabled 1000’s of developer work on their ideas and it has produced numerous versions of the same. His concept has made Linux grow to this stature and millions of developer contributes to its kernel.

Source: www.ibm.com

Linux is now the most successful open source OS, and it has more than thousand different versions available in the market.

7. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

Source: www.sanfranciscosentinel.com

It would not be wrong if we tagged Mark Zuckerberg with “a guy who redefined the concept of social networking in the web”. Yes it’s Mark Elliot Zuckerberg who instigated the idea of FACEBOOK. He launched it with his with fellow computer science students and his roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes when he was still a Harvard student.

Today FACEBOOK is the most popular social networking website in the world and has value pegged at roughly $10 billion.

An idea launched on Feb 04, 2004 has had a great success and made him be listed on the Forbes youngest billionaires in span of just over 5 years. His achievement could be judged by the success of Facebook which has collected 350 million active users in just six years.

8. Bill Fair (FICO)

Bill Fair was one of the co-founders of the company Fair Isaac Corporation. He and his friend Earl Isaac founded Fair Isaac Corporation in the year 1956. This firm provided consulting services and enterprise decisions management systems. But they redefined way of looking into the things with the FICO scores a measure of credit risk which is the most popular credit scores in the world today.

FICO’s client list covers more than 1,400 financial-service providers, including 99 of the top 100 US banks and 49 of the top 50 global banks.

Sad to say but I could not find any image of Bill Fair in the internet. Seems not even Fair Issac (now FICO) site has it now.

9. Halsey Minor (CNET)

Source: farm1.static.flickr.com

Halsey Minor, a technology entrepreneur, founded CNET in 1993. CNET.com is CNET’s online portal, providing access to CNET’s reviews, news, downloads, price comparisons.

Minor ran CNET for 8 years during which time it became one of the Internet’s first companies to achieve profitability which helped them achieve were recognition in 1999 when CNET was selected as one of only 2 Internet companies then to join the elite NASDAQ 100 which included companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Home Depot, and Dell.

CNet is now one of the Top Technology News site Globally.

10. Richard Stallman (Unix & GNU)

richard stallman

Richard Matthew Stallman is one such name in the industry today that has transpired the whole world today with hisconcepts of Free Software.

This concept of his created great revolution in the IT industry which had previously just seen off patent softwares and the ones which had Copyright Laws.

He is known more as an American software freedom activist who pioneered the concept of copyleft and is the main author of several copyleft licenses including the GNU General Public License, the most widely used free software license in the world.

He is simply the king of Open Source and Free Software.

11. Larry Ellison ( Oracle)

Source: www1.pictures.gi.zimbio.com

Lawrence Joseph “Larry” Ellison, an American entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation. Today, he is currently listed on the Forbes list of billionaires as the fourth richest person in the world (as of September 30, 2009).

All he did was, he explored the commercial potential in the concept of a Structure Query Language which he had come across a paper called “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks” by Edgar F. (“Ted”) Codd. His deed has made Oracle, the industry leader in database management software today.

12. Hasso Plattner (SAP):

Source: www.sfgate.com

Hasso Plattner is the one name behind the SAP.SAP AG is a multinational software development and consultingcorporation, which provides enterprise software applications and support to businesses of all sizes globally. To talk more about SAP, today, it is the largest software enterprise in Europe and the fourth largest software enterprise in the world and is best known product is its SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (SAP ERP) software.

SAP has other four applications that are widely used. SAP officials say there are over 100,600 SAP installations serving more than 41,200 companies in more than 25 industries in more than 120 countries.

13. Michael Widenius & 14. David Axmark (mySQL)

Source: http://developer.apple.com

Michael Widenius and David Axmark are such names in the industry today, who contributed in such way that they will be remembered for many years for their act of contributing to technology with MySql, a free relational database management system (RDBMS).

MySQL owned by AB MySQL (now acquired by Sun Microsystems), is the world’s most popular open source database software, with over 100 million copies of its software downloaded or distributed throughout its history. Some projects which include WordPress and also many high-profile, large-scale World Wide Web products including Wikipedia, Google, Drupal and Facebook.

Mark and David cofounder of AB MySql, began writing the first version of the MySQL database with David Axmark, released in 1996. Currently Michael is involved with his personal company and David has been involved with free software has said he is committed to developing a successful business model using free open source software.

15. Jerry Yang & 16. David Filo (Yahoo)

Jerry Yang, Chinese American entrepreneur, and David Filo is an American businessman co-founded Yahoo Inc. in1994. Started with Filo Server Program, C programmed server-side scripting software written by Filo; David and Jerry transpired Yahoo, as the worldwide provider of Internet Services and is the second most visited website in the world as of May 2009.

The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine (Yahoo! Search), Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, advertising, online mapping (Yahoo! Maps), video sharing (Yahoo! Video), and social media websites and services.

Post image Source: www.suno.edu

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