AMAZING CUSTOMER SERVICE @ AMAZON..

AMAZING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

“The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.”

Jeff Bezos, CEO & President of Amazon.com

The dot com bubble that bust in the early 2000, took away a number of companies into the oblivion. But a few companies in the world like Apple, Google, Amazon, Ebay, Zappos have survived the bouts of recession and tough times and gre from strength to strength.

This is is because, despite growing so big and leaders in their respective spheres of operation, they never forgot the basics about what got them to existence in the first pace.

While Apple believed in delivering amazing experience to its customers through its products, Google empathise with its users to provide them the best possible user experience, redefining the way information is searched, consumed and put to use productively,

Amazon under Jeff Bezos, has come up as an amazing customer focused organization.

In the words of Jeff Bezos, ‘If you build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.”

One of the lessons which Jeff Bezos, learnt and implemented at Amazon is that, satisfied and delighted customers are the best advertisement & publicity, a company can invest in, as they not only give more businesses in their life-time association with the company, but also bring their friends to become the customers. Hence Amazon focuses heavily in providing an excellent service to all its customers and keeps them delighted.

A similar culture and attitude is seen at Zappos, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon. At Zappos, the business model is developed around the goal of maximising the customer and employee happiness. While every call centre, measures its success by the number of successful calls handled in a given time, Zappos measures its success by the number of calls leading to excited customers. It celebrates the fact that customers love to spend more time talking to their call centres on an average call as, this in turn leads to more business per call and higher repeat order percentage as they satisfy their customers with best-fit solutions.

When we learn that the CEO of Amazon believes that each and every one of his global customers have be treated like a welcome guest to his party, by all his employees, we know the secret behind a vibrant & growing US$ 50 Billion, most admired global corporation!

LEAN MEAN & HUNGRY- GENERAL ELECTRIC

Lean Mean, Hungry and Agile at 120..
Lean, Mean and Hungry is the motto at GE, one of the finest brick and mortar businesses of the world.
Founded as Edison General Electric by Thomas Edison and later evolving into, General Electric by the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric of Schenectady, New York and Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts GE went on to become a Transnational Conglomerate, operating through four segments: Energy, Technology Infrastructure,Capital Finance and Consumer & Industrial.
Through a series of acquisitions, mergers, reorganizations and divestitures, Genera Electric became an industrial behemoth with a nine layered management structure which was slow to respond to the market dynamic.
GE made a phenomenal progress under Jack Welch who took over the reins of the company as its youngest Chairman and CEO in 1981.
Jack Welch delayered the organization, made it into a lean and hungry machine with an insatiable appetite for leader ship. He took a stand that, GE will operate in only those businesses, where GE is wither the 1st or the 2nd in market share. He rewarded the employees who figured in the top 20% of the performance list and fired those who were in the bottom 10%.
His carrot and stick policy of driving performance gave him the nick name of 'Neutron Jack' named after the Neutron Bomb, which destroys lives without damaging the structure of the buildings they are housed in.
Nevertheless, his leadership style kept the organization on its toes, nurtured execution excellence and led to the achievement of a phenomenal growth of 4000% during his tenure spanning 20 years.
Today, GE, under the leadership of  Jeffrey Immelt,  is one of the largest corporations in the world, with a turnover of over 147 Billion US Dollar and a net income of over 14Billion US dollar, employing over 3 lakh employees.

BENCHMARK FOR PROCESS EXCELLENCE- TOYOTA..

TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION:


TOYOTA =  OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE


The largest automobile company in the world today isToyota.  With over 255 Billion USDollar in annual revenue and having manufactured over 200 million automobiles, Toyota is an iconic organization that has revolutionised an entire industry with its revolutionary practices aimed at operational excellence. 
Incorporated in 1937, Toyota today manufactures a huge range of cars, Sports utility vehicles and  Luxury sedans across a wide price band through its factories across the globe.


Toyota pioneered the efforts to create process management models and methodologies to achieve operational excellence like  "Lean Manufacturing" and Just In Time Production that significantly improve productivity and profitability. Today, Lean Manufacturing and JIT methodologies are increasingly adapted by global  manufacturing organizations to cut down their operational expenses and drive down the manufacturing cost, thus increasing productivity drastically.
Toyota has become the global benchmark for best practices aimed at process & operational excellence. The Toyota Way, a set of principles and guidelines developed by the company embodies the outlook to be developed by global leader. 
The Toyota Way is supported by two main pillars: 
a) Respect for people and b) Continuous Improvement. 
Together, they define how the people of Toyota treat others and how they perform their work in order to deliver the company’s values to customers, shareholders, associates, business partners, and the global community.


Toyota way, summarizes its values and guidelines as follows:


Respect for People:

• Respect – we make every effort to understand each other, take responsibility and build mutual trust
• Teamwork – we stimulate personal and professional growth, share development opportunities, and maximise individual and team performance.

Continuous Improvement:

• Challenge –long-term vision, meet challenges with courage and creativity to realise the dream
• Kaizen – improve business operations continuously , always drive innovation and evolution
• Genchi genbutsu – go to the source to find the facts, make correct decisions, build consensus, and achieve goals at best speed.

These prinicples have led Toyota to be and be known as a true leader in Manufacturing Processes and Production techniques and Methodologies across the world.
Known for its proactive concern for Environmental preservation, Toyota has been a leader in environmentally friendly vehicle technologies. Toyota's R&D engineers are consistently focused on improving the  performance of Toyota's products on various aspects like fuel efficiency, emissions and noise during vehicle use, the disposal recovery rate, the reduction of substances of environmental concern, and CO2 emissions throughout the life cycle of the vehicle from production to disposal.

The United States EPA has awarded Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc (TEMA) with a ENERGY STAR Sustained Excellence Award in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Toyota has proved to the world, the positive impact of being an environmentally friendly 

ethical corporate with sound manufacturing methodologies and process excellence.

INNOVATION LED GROWTH..@ 3M

3M = INNOVATION

If there is one company in the word that personifies innovation in the world, it is 3M.
Started as Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing company in USA in 1902, 3M, came to be strongly associated as one of the pioneers of innovation catalysts in the world today. With a turnover of 29 Billion US Dollar in 2011 and a net income of over 4 Billion US Dollars, 3M has shown that innovation pays rich dividends in establishing a highly profitable global enterprises, while allowing it to touch the lives of people it serves in  a number of ways, very fondly.
Started as an unsuccessful stone mining company, 3M encouraged its employees to come out with new ideas  by offering its employees to spend 15% of their time at work to come out with innovative products. The products developed through this strategy, have now become the core of its product portfolio. Known globally for its Post-It Note, a revolutionary, yet simple product that has generated huge sales, 3M today has over 55,000 products, including adhesives, abrasives, laminates, passive fire protection, dental products, electronic materials, medical products, car care products (such as sun films, polish, wax, car shampoo, treatment for the exterior, interior and the under chassis rust protection), electronic circuits and optical films.
3M aims to achieve 33% of its turnover from new launches every year and all its innovations that have been taken to market, are showcased in its corporate office at Minnesota.
3M doesn't believe in innovation for innovation sake. It believes in operationalizing innovation through efficient and profitable manufacturing, leading to launch of unique products that positively impact the lives of its target audience.
3M is truly a global company with its products being available in over 200 companies. It has manufacturing operations and innovation laboratories in over 60 countries, employing over 80000 people, mostly local residents of respective countries.

SUCCESSION PLANNING & LEADERSHIP PIPELINE..

Successful Organizations survive for ages. There are over 60 organization in the world today who are more than 100 years old and thriving, contributing to over US$5 trillion revenue to the global economy.
While initially the passion from the promoters takes forward the organization and sets in  a growth path, it is not possible for the promoters to be with the organizations for ever. Hence to survive and thrive for a long period of time, the organizations need to find new leaders who may not be from the family of founders many a time.
In 1985, Apple Computers, after 9 years of existence, threw out its promoter Steve Jobs and brought in a new management under John Sculley. But the new leadership that has come from outside the company could not resonate with the original vision of the promoters and the dynamics of the market place and drove the company to disaster. This led to the recall of the original founders who led the company to unprecedented heights till the death of Steve Jobs in October 2011. What followed this time was a totally different scenario. The company carried forward the legacy with many more successes in the market place and became the most valued companies globally with a market capitalisation of over 500 Billion US Dollars, far ahead of the 2nd best in the word. This was possible due to well crated and executed succession plan.
Cisco, one of the finest companies in the world flourished after the exit of the promoters due to well crafted succession plan. John Chambers, the current chairman of Cisco who has taken the company from a small organization to a global leader with 40 Billion US Dollars is a product of an excellently executed succession planning effort at Cisco, that aimed to create a pipeline of leaders for the future.

In some family led companies the scions of the promoters take forward the agenda of the promoters successfully, provided they are well groomed to lead the business into the future. Classic examples like that of Reliance Industries ( Mukesh Ambani & Anil Ambani taking forward the mantel from Dhirubhai Ambani), Bajaj Auto ( Sanjeev Bajaj and Rajiv Bajaj taking over from Rahul Bajaj) and Kumara Mangalam Birla
( taking over from Aditya Vikram Birla ) are excellent cases of successful transition of leadership to the next generation of the family.
When the further generations do not share the passion of the founders are not in a position to take over successfully, organizations have to lan well ahead, separate the promoters from the leadership and carve out an succession planning strategy leading to the creation of a pipeline of leaders for the future.
Multinational organizations like Unilever, Infosys, Wipro, Tata Group, ICICI  have in place well planned and managed programs to develop the leaders to take over the mantle, whenever any gaps arise or when the organizations experience growth.
HCL group successfully transitioned the executive leadership from its charismatic promoters to professional leadership successfully that future proofs its business and ensure continuity.
Developing a well crafted Succession planning an creation of a strong pipeline of capable leaders who re oriented well to take the organization into the future is a must for the 21st century organizations who wish to last for ever.

BENCHMARK FOR BUSINESS ETHICS- INFOSYS & & TATA GROUP

Infosys and the Tata enterprises are the living examples for highest level of ethical conduct and no compromise approach to integrity in the pursuit of corporate excellence.

Infosys:

Infosys one of the pioneers in the Information technology industry in India, is a corporation which always stood for ethical and responsible approach to business.
It has been consistently viewed as the most transparent and ethical organization by the customers, employees, society and the investor community. Infosys's founder and Chairman Emeritus, N.R.Narayanamurthy, has always been a great  follower and advocate of ethics in business. 
Infosys's top management always championed the case of ethics in each and every one of its actions and messages, both within the company and outside as well.


“Professionalism and ethics are becoming more and more relevant in our quest to become better professionals, in our quest to make this country a better place and this world a better place. And that exactly is the background that we have set out with,”  Narayana Murthy.


Narayanamurthy, through his simplicity, approach to business, honesty, integrity and professional excellence proved to the world that, ethical conduct, transparency and business acumen are not at variance with each other and are indeed interrelated.
He along with his co-founders of Infosys, created perhaps the world's most ethical organization in the world with an incredible ascent on transparency, responsible behaviour and ethical conduct. This has created an organization with a distinctive value system and culture focused on integrity, transparency and responsible approach while pursuing excellence.


While a number of organizations today are engaged in window dressing their accounts and also are trying to communicate a performance far better than the actuals, with a view to inflating their valuation, Infosys always followed the policy of naked transparency in front of the investing community, through their ' When in doubt, disclose' approach.

In addition to complying to the laws of the land where ever it operates, Infosys  ensures transparency and accountability through the adoption of a Code of Conduct and Ethics and a Whistle-blower policy. Infosys ensures that every one of the employees is thoroughly oriented with the code of ethical conduct, by incorporating orientation modules on the same in the employee induction programs and also regularly updates all the employees worldwide, through online and offline training & awaremenrss programmes through the 'Do you know your ethics' series of events.

Through the internal TV channel Infy TV, Sparsh the corporate intranet, direct lectures and training programmes, the CEO & leaders at Infosys regularly talk to their employees about the importance of ethical conduct. An uncompromising stand on ethics is followed by strict actions are taken against the transgressors of the code of conduct, though they are few and far between.

Infosys has been consistently rated at the highest level of CGR ( Corporate Governance Rating) by all the rating organizations and agencies.

No wonder, Infosys has been consistently enjoying not only financial success but also a very high price-equity ratio that gives it an excellent valuation on the stock markets and a blue chip status.

Tata Group:


Tatas under the leadership of Ratan Tata have grown to be the largest corporate group operating out of India with a global presence.With an annual  turnover of over US$80 Billion, dominating presence across the world in a number of businesses and millions of employees,  Tata Group is an epitome of success. Ratan Tata's uncompromising approach to bend to the whims and fancies of those in power and compromise on ethical business conduct may have won him a number of enemies. But, this is what has earned him and his group an amazing respect across the globe as Tatas spread their footprint in to the developed markets through strategic acquisitions of world leaders like Corus Steel, JLR etc. The high valuation of the Tata Group companies and the willingness of the financial firms to lend money to the group without any limitations, has its roots in the respectability Tatas earned through their ethical conduct.

Ratan Tata and Narayana Murthy have established benchmark for ethical conduct and also proved unequivocally that long term business success and ethical behaviour are intertwined and inseparable.

BRILLIANT STRATEGY- EXCELLENT EXECUTION..-HCL TECHNOLOGIES..

HCL Technologies a 4 Billion US$ Information Technology company and a part of the 6 Billion US$ HCL group, is an emerging Indian Transnational organization in the lines of Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Mahindra & Mahindra, Reliance Industries, Wipro , Asian Paints and the like.


At a time when the industry leaders are struggling to keep pace with the pressure to perform in the market place, HCL Technologies continues to exceed the performance estimates by seasoned analysts, coming out with stellar results quarter after quarter.
In the words of its vice chairman and the CEO, Mr Vineet Nayar, ' In business, if you gloat over somebody else's poor show, you would become obsolete too. It is very important to compete with yourself.'


HCL Technologies is credited with a brilliant corporate strategy formulated by its top management to penetrate the global markets, achieve highest level of customer satisfaction leading to repeat business and good referrals, brilliant acquisition strategy to reach out to new product  market & service segments and an aggressive on the ground execution strategy that never leaves anything to chance.
HCL Tech, led by the legendary Shiv Nadar, was falling into the trap of being a promoter driven organization, which limits the growth to the active life time of the promoters. But the business continuity strategy of the promoters led it to the appointment of competent professionals to take the organization into the 21st century in a robust manner.


Having transitioned from a promoter led group into a professional management led organization, HCL Technologies stands to join the ranks of global transnational organizations like Cisco and Samsung which have flourished even after the exit of their promoters from the business and are here to stay for generations.
At the outset, HCL Technologies, when faced with severe competition in its core business and the markets it operates in, set out to implement the blue ocean strategy of identifying to uncontested market spaces offering immense potential with a possibility of high value addition and high margin business. Its spread its tentacles deeper into global markets with much stronger presence in the Europe, American, Asia and the African markets.
HCL acquired Axon technologies to cement its place in the higher end of the value chain of SAP consulting, globally.
With a strong presence across the globe, HCL Technolgies is now a truly global organization of Indian origin.
Another aspect of HCL Tech's brilliant strategic thinking was revealed when, HCL Tech announced its intention to put 'Employees first and Customers second', which is different from the conventional logic of putting customers  ahead of the employees as the most important pillars of the business.

As the information technology business is a manpower intensive business, focussing on the quality of the employees training them to be the best in what they do and keeping them motivated will ensure that they deliver the best results in front of the customers, thus dramatically improving the possibility of successful engagement.

HCL Tech has been consistently rated as one of the best employees in most of the countries it is present in and this has led to a delighted customer base that not only sticks steadfastly with the organization but also helps in increasing he depth and breadth by engaging more & referring more business to the company.

A Brilliant Strategy which also added its own weight in achieving execution excellence by a company which is known to be the most enterprising of the Indian corporate spectrum, has set HCLT on a journey of transformation that has made it one of the fastest-growing and profitable global IT services companies in the world today. According to BusinessWeek, HCL Tech is one of the twenty most influential companies in the world.

It can be safely said that HCL Tech is on an irreversible path of success as its top management never believes in resting on the past laurels of the organization. In the words of Mr Vineet Nayar,  'Your downfall begins the day you start believing that you are invincible and that you are the god's greatest gift to mankind. At HCL, we do not allow that feeling to enter. We have done relatively better but we are more concerned about our future'.

CHAMPION OF ENVIRONMENT- ITC (INDIA)

SUSTAINABILITY FOCUSED GROWTH...


ITC is a diversified Indian company with presence in FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods), Hotels, Paperboards & Specialty Papers, Packaging, Agri-Business and Information Technology. ITC  is one of the largest & most professionally run organizations in India. Established over 100 years back, ITC Limited, with a turnover close to US$ 7 Billion annually, net income close to US$ 3 billion and a market capitalisation of over US $ 40 Billion, is undoubtedly one of the most successful brick and mortar companies grown out of Indian soil.

ITC's efforts in Sustainable Development and Environmental preservation have been pioneering and exemplary.
For championing the issues of environmental preservation through well executed and widely participated afforestation programs, ITC was conferred the World Business and Development Award 2012 at the historic Rio+20 United Nations Summit.

By spearheading a low carbon growth strategy, ITC has achieved a number of milestones in the environmental and social dimensions.

i) ITC has been "carbon positive" for 7 consecutive years, sequestering twice its emissions.

ii)  It has been "water positive" for 10 years, having created freshwater potential that is more than twice its consumption. 

iii) ITC has been "solid waste recycling positive" for 5 years continuously.

iv) More than 38% of ITC's vast energy requirements are met from renewable sources. More than a dozen ITC facilities including premium luxury hotels and factories in several locations as well as the ITC Infotech Park and the ITC R & D Centre in Bengaluru run more or less completely with renewable energy . Such a large footprint of renewable energy not only reduces demand for fossil fuels but also contributes to cost efficiency in the long-term.

v) ITC Green Centre in Gurgaon has recently been re-certified as the world's highest rated Platinum certified green building by the US Green Building Council.

vi) Several of ITC's factories have also received the Platinum Green Factory Building Rating.

vii) ITC Hotels is the greenest hotel chain in the world with all the premium luxury hotels of the company being Platinum LEED certified.

ITC also undertakes several social development focused initiatives to provide sustainable livelihood opportunities to over 5 million rural & tribal people in India.

Some of the popular programmes ITC runs are:

a) Farmer empowerment programme: ITC e-Choupal benefiting over 4million farmers from over 40000 villages

b) Social farming and Forestry Programmes : ITC has undertaken significant wasteland development and greening of over 125,000 hectares and uses renewable plantations from these areas enabling ITC to offer the greenest products in the country such as Classmate notebooks and Paperkraft business and copier paper.

c) Wealth out of Waste (WoW) programme : ITC's WoW initiative is supported by 3 million citizens, 500,000 school children, 350 corporates and over 1,000 commercial establishments. This in turn helps augment green cover, conserves energy and scarce natural resources, makes surroundings clean and healthy and creates livelihood opportunities.

With a number of well-crafted programs, ITC strategically follows a sustainable development model that has paid rich dividends to it as an organization as well.

From a company suffering from a poor image of being a tobacco product maker once upon a time, ITC has transformed itself into a highly valuable and most respected enterprise, commanding a high price-equity ration for its stock in the Indian stock exchanges. This is one of the main reasons behind its soaring market valuation in excess of 40 Billion US Dollars, giving it a great financial strength to thrive in the extremely competitive environment of the 21st century.

ITC can be taken as a benchmark for the organizations aiming to achieve a fine balance of their Triple Bottom Line objectives, thus pursuing the Sustainable Development model of excellence.

For any views and suggestions, please write to me at ms@mastermentors.in

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INNOVATION & MARKETING EXCELLENCE AT ITS BEST..

                                BENCHMARK FOR BRILLIANCE...


Samsung is the finest organization in the world to combine brilliant innovation, marketing and execution excellence for a transnational dominance in its areas of operation.


"Samsung Electronics' future is not guaranteed because most of our flagship products will be obsolete in 10 years from now."....Lee Kun-hee,, Chairman, Samsung Electronics.
The above statement by Samsung's chairman reflects  the restlessness of the organizations in continuously reinventing the future with breathtaking innovation & excellence in go-to market strategies.
With a group turnover of US$248 Billion and a company annual turnover of US$ 149 Billion & a net income of over US$ 12 Billion in the year 2011, if there is one company in the world which is the most successful across the spectrum of its operations in Consumer Electronics, Technology hardware. Mobile Phones and Consumer Appliances, it is Samsung Electronics.

Known for an incredible picture quality in all its products including digital cameras, mobile phones, colour televisions, LCD screens etc., Samsung  always strives to offer the best experience to its consumers.
Setting itself with a mission of overtaking the Japanese in its area of operation in the early 2000s, Samsung achieved its first mission aimed at the dominance of the world's global markets in 2005 by overtaking Sony.                                                            
                                                                         Today Samsung achieved the following:

• World's largest information technology company measured by 2011 revenue, far ahead of Apple ( 109 Billion US$ and Hewlett Packard 128 Bullion US$).
• World leader in  Memory Chips and the world's 2nd largest in Semiconductor technology after Intel.
• World's largest Mobile Phone company by selling 92 million Mobile phones in the 1st Quarter of 2012 as against Nokia's 83 million.
• World's largest seller of Smart phones devices ahead of Apple, with its Galaxy range of products..
• World leader in Flat panel televisions based on LCD & LED technologies.
• Best Value for Money Technology Brand combining the best in technology, features with a the ost competitive price in each of its category of products.
• Largest seller of 3D Range of televisions in the world and the first company in the industry to have the full line of 3D offerings, including 3D television, 3D Blu-ray play, 3D content,  3D Home Theater and 3D glasses.

What are the factors behinds the success of Samsung?

Focus on Innovation as a core strategy:

Samsung is consistently ranked in the list of Most Innovative organizations in the world by every leading publication in the world. Innovation, which has been emphasized as its core strategy since the early 200 has once again been highlighted as its main stay in its Vision 2020 strategy document, where Samsung has outlined plans to reach a turnover of over US$ 400 Billions. 

Samsung has consistently been one of the largest investors in R&D along with Google and Apple, with over 20 state of the art research and development centres across the world.  This has allowed to be a continuous stream of Cutting edge technologies for the world.

Samsung has also a sharp attitude of keeping itself abreast of latest technology developments happening its domain of operations and adapting to the same through alliances, strategic partnerships and rapid product development.

Focus on Marketing:

Samsung has invested  heavily in Marketing right from the late 1990s, to create a very strong brand awareness.

By sponsoring some of the biggest sporting events across all the games, Samsung has leveraged the high patronage of sports to create a strong association with fitness, excellence and leadership across the world.

Focus on Quality:

Samsung has invariably come out with the finest quality products with excellent value for money built in, at the same time. This enables it to not only to develop its own branded products, but also to sell to other global brands as OEM Products. Samsung is perhaps the largest brand company in the world that  sells parts, components and products to its competitors. This is not possible unless it focuses on producing flawless quality.

Focus on Global markets:

By penetrating into all the major markets in the world, Samsung has overcome the limitation of a small domestic market and exploited the vast size of target markets globally. It has set up subsidiary companies and branches across the world, ingrained itself into the local fabric of all the countries it is present in and developed ons the best selling infrastructures. It attracts the best of manpower locally across its various division and consistently invests in training them to keep their skills sharpened. This is unmatched by any technology company in the world. This will give Samsung, a strong platform to take its cutting edge products to the market ahead of any of its rivals with unparelleled efficiency.

Focus on Customer Service:

Samsung invested heavily in building an after sales support infrastructure to take care of all its products. Despite having some of the finest quality products that seldom come out with defects, Samsung has created a vast supporting infrastructure globally that re assures its customers. Its ability to execute its programs and launch new products confidently across the world has been strongly supported and aided by its competent service backup.

Focus on Sustained Development:

Samsung has made pioneering efforts in the areas of environment safety and sustainable development.

It was the first major electronics company to publicly commit to eliminate PVC and BFRs from new models of all its products and achieved this status for it mobile phones and MP3 rrange of products in April 2010.

With over 90% of its products achieving the global Eco-label, Samsung is ranked as the the world's number-one company in terms of the number of products meeting Global Ecolabel standards. Through its well acclaimed voluntary "Samsung Recycling Direct" program is accelerating its efforts to recover and recycle electronic wastes in a number of companies across the world.

The insecurity  feeling that Samsung imposes on itself, acts as a spring board to keep leaping ahead and ahead, not from competition, from its existing status of indisputable leadership as the organization never rests on its past laurels.

Samsung is undoubtedly the company to watch for and benchmarked against, for the companies aiming for success in the 21st century..

For any views and suggestions, please write to me at ms@mastermentors.in
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SUCCESSFUL ORGANIZATIONS- TECHNOLOGY BASED

                      SUCCESSFUL COMPANIES IN THE NEW GENERATION
Success in the 21st century belongs to the companies who combine knowledge with execution excellence. Leveraging technology in a smart way is the key factor for success and no doubt the Information Technology domain has produced some of the finest companies in today's world.

There is no formula for measuring the success of a company. Most of the focus on measuring the success of a company deals with numbers related to the balance sheets, profits, shares and finances of a company. However, the impact of a company is often beyond these numbers. The measure of success is different for different companies, while for an early stage start-up, success is about survival. For an enterprise like Google, success is about changing the way people use information and make decisions. 

The true measure of success for any organisation depends on its performance against its goals. However, there are certain benchmarks that the most successful organisations set, when it comes to an evaluation by the external world. The most remarkable companies on the planet are those that have transformed the world to be a better place and are consistently at it. They have changed the way people do things and are creating a huge impact by their existence. These companies have transformed the lives of people for the better. For example, Google has changed the way information is sought for and consumed in the world. It has put an unlimited power in the hands of the people by providing them access to quality information at the wink of an eye, that helps them drastically improve their productivity and performance levels and has become an indispensable part of the global citizens' lives. This is the true measure of success for a company. 

Some of the finest companies in the world,  that have achieved success on the global scale, in the Technology & Knowledge intensive domains are given in the following table..

MASTER MENTORS HALL OF FAME- TECHNOLOGY & TELECOM
					LAST PUBLISHED (Amount in US$ Billion)
DOMAIN	NAME	FOUNDED YEAR	COUNTRY	REGION	TURNOVER	NET INCOME	EMPLOYEES
TECH-CONGLOMERATE	SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS	1969	SOUTH KOREA	SEOUL	149.00	12.00	160000
TECHNOLOGY	HEWLETT-PACKARD COMPANY	1939	USA	CALIFORNIA	127.00	7.00	349600
TELECOM	AT&T INC	1983	USA	TEXAS	127.00	3.90	256420
TECH-CONGLOMERATE	HITACHI	1910	JAPAN	TOKYO	123.52	4.44	372360
TELECOM	VERIZON	1983	USA	NEWYORK	110.00	2.40	188200
TECHNOLOGY	APPLE INC	1976	USA	CALIFORNIA	108.25	26.00	60400
TECHNOLOGY	IBM	1911	USA	NEWYORK	107.00	16.00	433362
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS	PANASONIC	1918	JAPAN	OSAKA	99.96	9.85	330767
TECH-CONGLOMERATE	SIEMENS	1847	GERMANY	BERLIN/ MUNICH	90.41	7.56	360000
TECH-CONGLOMERATE	TOSHIBA	1939	JAPAN	TOKYO	81.51	1.76	212000
TECH-CONGLOMERATE	SONY CORPORATION	1946	JAPAN	TOKYO	80.58	-5.75	162700
TELECOM	VODAFONE	1991	UK	LONDON	71.76	12.32	83862
TECHNOLOGY	MICROSOFT CORP	1975	USA	WASHINGTON	69.94	23.15	90000
TECHNOLOGY	DELL INC	1984	USA	TEXAS	63.00	3.50	110000
TELECOM	ORANGE	1994	FRANCE	PARIS	57.44	5.74	168694
TECHNOLOGY	FUJITSU	1935	JAPAN	TOKYO	57.09	0.55	172336
TECHNOLOGY	INTEL CORP	1968	USA	CALIFORNIA	54.00	12.90	100100
TELECOM	NTT DOCOMO	1991	JAPAN	TOKYO	53.85	5.89	22954
TECH-CONGLOMERATE	LG ELECTRONICS	1958	SOUTH KOREA	SEOUL	49.00	-0.42	91000
INTERNET	AMAZON.COM INC	1994	USA	WASHINGTON	48.00	0.63	65000
TELECOM	NOKIA CORP	1865	FINLAND	EXPOO	47.54	-1.43	122148
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS	CANON INC	1937	JAPAN	TOKYO	44.82	3.16	198307
TECHNOLOGY	CISCO SYSTEMS INC	1984	USA	CALIFORNIA	43.00	6.50	71025
INTERNET	GOOGLE INC	1998	USA	CALIFORNIA	38.00	9.80	55000
TECHNOLOGY	ORACLE CORP	1977	USA	CALIFORNIA	37.00	10.00	115166
TELECOM	ERICSSON	1876	SWEDEN	STOCKHOLM	32.69	1.81	104525
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS	SHARP CORPORATION	1912	JAPAN	TOKYO	31.37	0.00	57200
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS	PHILIPS	1891	NETHERLANDS	AMSTERDAM	31.27	1.78	114500
TELECOM	TELSTRA	1975	AUSTRALIA	MELBOURNE	26.03	3.32	35790
TECHNOLOGY	XEROX	1906	USA	NEWYORK	22.62	1.33	139650
TECHNOLOGY	LENOVO	1984	INDIA	BEIJING	21.60	0.27	26341
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS	WHIRLPOOL	1911	USA	MICHIGAN	18.34	0.60	71000
TECHNOLOGY	SAP	1972	GERMANY	Weinheim	17.26	4.24	59420
TELECOM	ALCATEL-LUCENT	1898	FRANCE	PARIS	15.42	1.12	76000
TELECOM	QUALCOMM	1985	USA	CALIFORNIA	15.00	4.26	17500
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS	ELECTROLUX GROUP	1919	SWEDEN	STOCKHOLM	14.63	0.38	52916
INTERNET	EBAY INC	1995	USA	CALIFORNIA	11.65	3.20	27770
TELECOM	BHARTI AIRTEL	1995	INDIA	DELHI	10.00	2.00	20500
TECHNOLOGY	TCS	1968	INDIA	MUMBAI	8.89	1.93	243545
TELECOM	MOTOROLA CORP	1928	USA	ILLINOIS	8.20	1.15	23000
TECHNOLOGY	WIPRO	1945	INDIA	BANGALORE	7.30	1.09	135920
TECHNOLOGY	INFOSYS	1981	INDIA	BANGALORE	7.00	1.71	151151
TECHNOLOGY	COGNIZANT TECHNOLOGY	1994	USA	NEWJERSEY	6.12	0.88	140500
TECH-CONGLOMERATE	HCL GROUP	1976	INDIA	NOIDA	5.36	0.41	90000
INTERNET	YAHOO! INC	1995	USA	CALIFORNIA	4.98	1.05	14100
TELECOM	RELIANCE COMMUNICATIONS	2004	INDIA	MUMBAI	4.54	0.27	20000
TECHNOLOGY	ADOBE SYSTEMS	1982	USA	SANJOSE	4.21	0.83	9925
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS	VIDEOCON	1979	INDIA	AURANGABAD	4.00		50000
INTERNET	FACEBOOK	2004	USA	CALIFORNIA	3.71	1.00	3200
TELECOM	IDEA CELLULAR	1995	INDIA	MUMBAI	3.07	0.17	6500
TECHNOLOGY	TECH MAHINDRA	1986	INDIA	PUNE	1.06	0.13	42746
INTERNET	LINKEDIN	2006	USA	CALIFORNIA	0.52	0.01	2447

Details of some of these companies as given in Wikipedia are given below..

Philips

Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.

Type	Naamloze vennootschap
Traded as	Euronext: PHIA, NYSE: PHG
Industry	Electronics
Founded	15 May 1891 (Eindhoven)
Headquarters	Amsterdam, Netherlands
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Frans van Houten (CEO),Jeroen van der Veer (Chairman of the supervisory board)
Products	Consumer electronics,domestic appliances, lighting,medical systems, medical technology
Revenue	€25.42 billion (2010)[1]
Operating income	€2.065 billion (2010)[1]
Profit	€1.446 billion (2010)[1]
Total assets	€32.27 billion (end 2010)[1]
Total equity	€15.09 billion (end 2010)[1]
Employees	114,500 (2011)
Website	philips.com

Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Royal Philips Electronics, commonly known as Philips) (Euronext: PHIA, NYSE: PHG) is a Dutchmultinational electronics company headquartered in Amsterdam. It was founded in Eindhoven in 1891 by Gerard Philips and his father Frederik.

Philips had revenues of €25.42 billion in 2010, making it one of the largest electronics companies in the world. It employs around 114,500 people across more than 60 countries.^[1]

Philips is organized into three main divisions: Philips Consumer Lifestyle (formerly Philips Consumer Electronics and Philips Domestic Appliances and Personal Care), Philips Healthcare (formerly Philips Medical Systems) and Philips Lighting. As of 2012 Philips is the largest manufacturer of lighting in the world.^[2]

Philips has a primary listing on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange and is a constituent of the AEX index. It has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

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Electrolux

AB Electrolux

Type	Publicly traded Aktiebolag
Traded as	OMX: ELUX B,NASDAQ: ELUXF
Industry	Household appliances
Founded	1919
Headquarters	Stockholm, Sweden
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Marcus Wallenberg (Chairman),Keith McLoughlin (President andCEO)
Products	Major and Small appliances
Revenue	SEK 101.60 billion (2011)[1]
Operating income	SEK 3.017 billion (2011)[1]
Profit	SEK 2.64 billion (2011)[1]
Total assets	SEK 76.384 billion (end 2011)[1]
Total equity	SEK 20.644 billion (end 2011)[1]
Employees	52,916 (average, 2011)[1]
Website	www.electrolux.com

AB Electrolux (commonly known as Electrolux) is a Swedish multinational home appliance manufacturer headquartered in Stockholm,Sweden.^[2][3][4] It is the world's second-largest home appliance maker by 2010 market share (after Whirlpool).^[5] Its products sell under a variety of brand names including its own and are primarily major appliances and vacuum cleaners.^[6] The company also makes appliances for professional use.^[4]

Forbes Magazine says Electrolux is one of the top 5 companies in consumer durable goods, worldwide, and named it to its list of 130 Global High Performers in 2010.^[7]

Electrolux has a primary listing on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the OMX Stockholm 30 index.

Electrolux moved its North American headquarters from Augusta, GA to Charlotte, North Carolina, announcing it in December 2009. Electrolux's CEO said they chose Charlotte for a number of reasons. He mentioned the area's culture, quality of life and workforce. A major factor was easy access to an international airport with an airline hub.

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Sony

Sony Corporation
ソニー株式会社

Type	Public
Traded as	TYO: 6758 NYSE: SNE
Industry	Conglomerate
Founded	7 May 1946[1]
Founder(s)	Masaru Ibuka Akio Morita
Headquarters	Minato, Tokyo, Japan
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Sir Howard Stringer (Chairman of the Board) Kazuo Hirai (President & CEO) Ryōji Chūbachi (Vice Chairman)
Products	Consumer electronics Semiconductors Video games Media/Entertainment Computer hardware Telecom equipment
Services	Financial services, insurance, banking, credit finance and advertising agency
Revenue	¥6.395 trillion (2012)[2]
Operating income	¥-70 billion (2012)[2]
Net income	¥-456 billion (2012)[2]
Total assets	¥13.29 trillion (2012)[2]
Total equity	¥2.028 trillion (2012)[2]
Employees	162,700 (2012)[3]
Subsidiaries	List of subsidiaries
Website	Sony.net

Sony Corporation (ソニー株式会社 Sonī Kabushiki Gaisha^?) (TYO: 6758, NYSE: SNE), commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanesemultinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Kōnan Minato, Tokyo, Japan.^[4] It ranked 87th on the 2012 list of Fortune Global 500.^[2][5]Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics products for the consumer and professional markets.^[6]

Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the Sony Group, which is engaged in business through its four operating segments – Electronics (including video games, network services and medical business), Motion pictures, Music and Financial Services.^[7][8][9] These make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. Sony's principal business operations include Sony Corporation (Sony Electronics in the U.S.), Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Mobile Communications (formerly Sony Ericsson), and Sony Financial. As a semiconductor maker, Sony is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders.

The Sony Group (ソニー・グループ Sonī Gurūpu^?) is a Japan-based corporate group primarily focused on the Electronics (such as AV/IT products and components), Game (such as PlayStation), Entertainment (such as motion pictures and music), and Financial Services (such as insurance and banking) sectors. The group consists of Sony Corporation (holding and electronics), Sony Computer Entertainment (game), Sony Pictures Entertainment (motion pictures), Sony Music Entertainment (music), Sony/ATV Music Publishing (music publishing), Sony Financial Holdings(financial services) and others.

Its founders Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka derived the name from sonus, the Latin word for sound, and also from the English slang word "sonny", since they considered themselves to be "sonny boys", a loan word into Japanese which in the early 1950s connoted smart and presentable young men.^[6]

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LG Corp

LG Corp.
LG 법인

Logo used since 1995.
Type	Public
Traded as	KRX: 003550
Industry	Conglomerate
Founded	1947
Headquarters	Seoul, South Korea
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Koo Bon-Moo (Chairman & CEO) Yu Sig Kang (Vice Chairman & Co-CEO) Juno Cho (EVP & COO)
Products	Electronics, chemicals, telecommunications, engineering
Revenue	US$ 89.5 billion (2010)[1]
Net income	US$ 5.8 billion (2010)[2]
Total assets	US$ 62.0 billion (2010)[2]
Employees	186,000 (2009)
Subsidiaries	LG Electronics LG Display LG Telecom LG Chem LG Life Sciences LG Solar Energy
Website	www.lgcorp.comes utilized celebrities such as South Korean pop girl group Girls' Generation for the LG Cookie in 2010.e Refrigerator (KF-P8903 HLP).

LG Corp. (Korean: LG 법인) is the second-largest South Korean chaebol following Samsung and its headquarters is situated at the LG Twin Towers inYeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul.^[3] LG makes electronics, chemicals, and telecommunications products and operates subsidiaries like LG Electronics, LG Display, LG Telecom and LG Chem in over 80 countries.

LG Corp. founder Koo In-Hwoi established Lak-Hui Chemical Industrial Corp. in 1947.^[4] In 1952, Lak-Hui (pronounced "Lucky", currently LG Chem) became the first Korean company to enter the plastic industry. As the company expanded its plastic business, it established Goldstar Co. Ltd. (currently LG Electronics Inc.) in 1958. Both companies Lucky and Goldstar merged and formed Lucky-Goldstar.

Goldstar produced South Korea's first radio. Many consumer electronics were sold under the brand name Goldstar, while some other household products (not available outside South Korea) were sold under the brand name of Lucky. The Lucky brand was famous for hygiene products such as soaps and HiTi laundry detergents, but the brand was mostly associated with its Lucky and Perioe toothpaste. Even today, LG continues to manufacture some of these products for the South Korean market, such as laundry detergent.

In 1995, to compete better in the Western market, the Lucky-Goldstar Corporation was renamed "LG", the abbreviation of "Lucky-Goldstar". More importantly, the company associates the letters LG with the company's tagline "Life's Good". This tagline came from Australia, where many of the products are tested first by LG. Since 2009, LG also owns the domain name LG.com.

Since 2001, LG has two joint ventures with Royal Philips Electronics: LG Philips Display and LG Philips LCD, but Philips sold off its shares in late 2008.^[8] In 2005, LG entered into a joint venture with Nortel Networks, creating LG-Nortel Co. Ltd.

The company logo of LG features the letters “L” and “G”, presented in the form of a smiling human face.^[9] It was later noticed by members of the Internet community that if the L in the logo were to be moved upwards to match the rest of the logo, then the logo turns into a Pacman shaped object.^[10]

---------------------------------------------------------------------

[edit]

Samsung

Samsung Group
삼성그룹
三星그룹

Type	Chaebol
Industry	Conglomerate
Founded	1938
Founder(s)	Lee Byung-chull
Headquarters	Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Lee Kun-hee (Chairman andCEO) Lee Soo-bin (President, CEO ofSamsung Life Insurance)[1]
Products	Consumer electronics,shipbuilding, telecom, engineering and construction,information and communications technology services, financial services, chemicals, retail, heavy industries, entertainment, apparel, medical services
Revenue	US$ 247.5 billion (2011)[2]
Net income	US$ 18.3 billion (2011)[2]
Total assets	US$ 384.3 billion (2011)[2]
Total equity	US$ 224.7 billion (2011)[2]
Employees	344,000 (2010)[2]
Subsidiaries	Samsung Electronics Samsung Life Insurance Samsung Heavy Industries Samsung C&T Samsung SDS etc.
Website	Samsung.com

Samsung Group (Hangul: 삼성그룹; Hanja: 三星그룹; Korean pronunciation: [sam.sʌŋ ɡɯ'ɾup̚], informally Samsung) is a South Korean multinationalconglomerate company headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul. It comprises numerous subsidiaries and affiliated businesses, most of them united under the Samsung brand, and is the largest South Korean chaebol.

Notable Samsung industrial subsidiaries include Samsung Electronics (the world's largest information technology company measured by 2011 revenues),^[3][4] Samsung Heavy Industries (the world's second-largest shipbuilder measured by 2010 revenues),^[5], Samsung Techwin (weapons technology and optoelectronics), and Samsung Engineering and Samsung C&T (respectively the world's 35th- and 72nd-largest construction companies).^[6] Other notable subsidiaries include Samsung Life Insurance (the world's 14th-largest insurance company),^[7] Samsung Everland (the oldest theme park in South Korea)^[8] and Cheil Worldwide (the world's 19th-largest advertising agency measured by 2010 revenues).^[9][10]

Samsung produces around a fifth of South Korea's total exports^[11] and its revenues are larger than many countries' GDP; in 2006, it would have been the world's 35th-largest economy.^[12] The company has a powerful influence on South Korea's economic development, politics, media and culture, and has been a major driving force behind the "Miracle on the Han River".In the "World's Most Reputable Companies" 2011 list, published by the Reputation Institute, Samsung Electronics was placed at 22nd,^[30] consistent with the previous year (a significant advancement occurred between 2009 and 2010 when the company leaped from 75th position^[31]). The company was also ranked 11th in the "50 Most Innovative Companies 2010" list put out byBusinessWeek, a five-notch increase from the previous year's 16th.

The company had emphasized innovation in its management strategy since the early 2000s and it again highlighted innovation as part of core strategies when it announced the Vision 2020 in which the company set an ambitious goal of reaching the $400-billion sales revenue within ten years. In order to cement its leadership in the areas of memory chip and television production, the company has invested aggressively in research and development. The company has 24 research-and-developement centers around the world. In the 2010 BusinessWeek innovation ranking, Appleand Google retained the leading positions as in the 2009 list, followed by Microsoft, which gained one notch from 2009's fourth place.

Meanwhile, the company took the 33rd place in the "World's Most Valuable Brands 2010" list made public by Forbes magazine. The magazine said that the company's brand value was as much as $12.8 billion with an average sale revenue growth rate of 17 percent for the past three years.

In April 2011, Samsung Electronics sold its HDD commercial operations to Seagate Technology for approximately US$1.4 billion. The payment was composed of 45.2 million Samsung-Seagate shares (9.6 percent of shares), worth US$687.5 million, and a cash sum for the remainder.^[32]

In the first quarter of 2012, the company became the highest-selling mobile phone company when it surpassed Nokia with 93.5 million units sold and 82.7 million units sold, respectively. Samsung also took pole position in smartphones with "brisk sales" of its Galaxy SII smartphone (and newer Galaxy Note device).

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ACCENTURE Plc:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Accenture Inc

Type	Public limited company
Traded as	NYSE: ACN
Industry	IT services, IT consulting
Predecessor(s)	Arthur Andersen (1989-2001)
Founded	2001
Headquarters	Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	William D. Green (Executive Chairman) Pierre Nanterme (CEO)
Services	IT, business consulting andoutsourcing services
Revenue	US$ 27.35 billion (2011)[1]
Operating income	US$ 3.47 billion (2011)[1]
Net income	US$ 2.27 billion (2011)[1]
Total assets	US$ 15.73 billion (2011)[1]
Total equity	US$ 3.87 billion (2011)[1]
Employees	251,000 (May 2012)
Website	www.accenture.com

Accenture plc (NYSE: ACN) is a multinational management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company headquartered in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the largest consulting firm in the World^[2] and is a Fortune Global 500 company.^[3] As of September 2011, the company had more than 244,000 employees across 120 countries.^[2][4] Accenture's current clients include 96 of the Fortune Global 100 and more than three-quarters of the Fortune Global 500. The international company was first incorporated in Bermuda in 2001.^[5] Since September 1, 2009 the company has been incorporated in Ireland.^[6]

Accenture is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the S&P 500.

Accenture originated as the business and technology consulting division of accounting firm Arthur Andersen. The division's origins are in a 1953 feasibility study for General Electric. GE asked Arthur Andersen to automate payroll processing and manufacturing at GE's Appliance Park facility near Louisville, Kentucky. Arthur Andersen recommended installation of a UNIVAC I computer and printer, which resulted in the first commercially owned computer installation in the United States in 1954. Joe Glickauf was Arthur Andersen's project leader responsible for the payroll processing automation project. Now considered to be the father of computer consulting, Glickauf headed Arthur Andersen's Administrative Services division for 10 years.  On January 1, 2001 Andersen Consulting adopted its current name, "Accenture". The word "Accenture" is supposedly derived from "Accent on the future". Although a marketing consultancy was tasked with finding a new name for the company, the name "Accenture" was submitted by Kim Petersen, a Danish employee from the company's Oslo, Norway office, as a result of an internal competition. Accenture felt that the name should represent its will to be a global consulting leader and high performer, and also intended that the name should not be offensive in any country in which Accenture operates.

PricewaterhouseCoopers

PricewaterhouseCoopers
(trading as PwC)

Type	Member firms have different legal structures; both UK and US firms are limited liability partnerships
Industry	Professional services
Founded	1998 (PricewaterhouseCoopers) 1849 (Price Waterhouse) 1854 (Coopers & Lybrand)[1]
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom[2]
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Dennis Nally (Chairman)[3]
Products	Assurance Tax Advisory Consulting Financial Advisory Actuarial Legal
Revenue	US$29.2 billion (FY 2011)[4]
Employees	169,000 (2011)[4]
Website	pwc.com

PricewaterhouseCoopers (trading as PwC) is a global professional services firm headquartered in London, United Kingdom.^[2] It is the world's largest professional services firm and the largest of the "Big Four" accountancy firms measured by 2011 revenues.^[5]

Revenues in Billio US Dollars of the top four global accounting and consultancy firms for 2011 are as: PwC- 29.2, Deloitte, 28.8, and for 2010,  Ernst & Young 21.3 & KPMG 22.7. 

The PricewaterhouseCoopers name was formed by the combination of the names of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand, following their merger in 1998. On 20 September 2010, PricewaterhouseCoopers rebranded as PwC, although the legal name of the firm remained PricewaterhouseCoopers

PwC has offices in 771 cities across 158 countries and employs over 169,000 people.^[4] It had total revenues of $29.2 billion in FY 2011, of which $14.14 billion was generated by its Assurance practice, $7.63 billion by its Tax practice and $7.46 billion by its Advisory practice.^[6]

The firm was formed in 1998 by a merger between Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse.^[1] The trading name was shortened to PwC in September 2010 as part of a major rebranding exercise.^[7]

PricewaterhouseCoopers has three main service lines:^[20]

• Assurance Services
• Tax Advisory, (international tax planning and compliance with local tax laws, customs, human resource consulting, and transfer pricing)
• Advisory – mainly consulting activities which covers Strategy, Performance Improvement, Transactions Services, Business Recovery Services, Corporate Finance, Business Valuation, Sustainability and Crisis Management in a range of specialist areas such as accountancy and actuarial advisory.

PwC's service lines face the market in each country by broad industry specialisations such as:

• Consumer and Industrial Products and Service (CIPS)^[21]
• Financial Services (FS)^[22]
• Technology, Information, Communications and Entertainment (TICE)^[23]
• Infrastructure, Government and Utilities (IG&U)^[24]
• Private Company Services (PCS)^[25]

These sub-divisions may vary slightly in some territories.

[edit]Consulting

PwC has developed several broader consulting initiatives in the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) framework, including a global effort to assist corporations with outsourcing, as well as a global political risk assessment with the political risk advisory firm Eurasia Group.^[26]

Advisory services offered by PwC also include two actuarial consultancy departments; Actuarial and Insurance Management Solutions (AIMS) and a sub branch of "Human Resource Services" (HRS). Actuarial covers mainly 4 areas: pensions, life insurance, non-life insurance and investments. AIMS deals with life and non-life insurance and investments while HRS deals mainly with pensions.^[27]

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McKinsey & Company

McKinsey & Company

Type	Incorporated Partnership
Industry	Management consulting
Founded	1926
Founder(s)	James O. McKinsey and Marvin Bower
Number of locations	about 100 offices in 50 countries
Key people	Dominic Barton (managing director 2009-present)
Services	Management consulting services
Revenue	$ 7 billion (est. 2010)[1]
AUM	over $ 5 billion (MIO Partners)
Employees	17,000 (9,000 consultants)[2]
Website	www.mckinsey.com

McKinsey & Company, Inc. is a global management consulting firm that focuses on solving issues of concern to McKinsey & Company was founded in Chicago in 1926 by James O. ("Mac") McKinsey as James O. McKinsey and Company. Previously, McKinsey served as an accounting professor at theUniversity of Chicago Booth School of Business and is considered the father of managerial accounting. senior management. McKinsey serves as an adviser to many businesses, governments, and institutions. It is recognized as one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world,^[3][4] has proportionally produced more CEOs in large-scale corporations than any other company,^[5] and has been a top employer for newMBA graduates since 1996.^[6]

The firm, while formally organized as a corporation, functions as a partnership in all important respects. Its managing director is elected for a three-year term by the firm's other senior partners. Each managing director can serve a maximum of three terms, a policy instituted by Gupta. At a strategic level, a number of committees are charged with the development of policies and making critical decisions. Committee memberships, senior roles, and the managing director position all rotate regularly among the firm's senior partners and directors.^[9]

Former managing director Rajat Gupta explains McKinsey's structure as follows:

It is very much, in many dimensions, like an academic organization. We have senior partners who are very much like tenured faculty: they are leaders in their own right. [...] We have about 80 to 100 performance cells -- a geographic office or industry practice or functional practice. They are very much autonomous and they are not organized in any hierarchy beyond that. We don't have any regional structures or sectoral structures. So all these performance units, in a theoretical sense, report to me, which means they don't report to anybody, because nobody can have 80 or 100 people reporting to them.^[9]

The firm operates under a practice of "up or out", meaning that consultants must either advance in their consulting careers within a pre-defined timeframe or leave the firm. "25% of the firm is new every year," Gupta says, "so half the people have less than two to three years' tenure in the firm, and their values need to be reinforced." All senior roles rotate among the directors (senior partners).^[9][10]

McKinsey has about 9,000 consultants in 97 locations in 55 countries,^[11] working with more than 90% of the 100 leading global corporations and two-thirds of the Fortune 1000 list.The firm is organizationally divided into partners and non-partners. It is generally not possible to join the firm as a partner; instead, partners are promoted internally from the existing ranks of principals and associates. According to the Firm's career website, "successful consultants who join McKinsey early in their career can expect election to principal (the first stage of partnership) within five to seven years. ... There is no limit to the size of our partnership."^[17] Successful partners are sometimes elected director (senior partner) after at least seven years as partner, though there are fast-rising exceptions: Daniel, Gupta, and Kumar become directors approximately 10 years after joining the firm as associates.

Officially, "director" is the highest position (other than the rotating managing director) at McKinsey, though top directors are distinguished by reputation and influence. The firm's mandatory retirement age is 60, after which directors become "director emeritus

Former managing director (CEO) Rajat Gupta was convicted in June 2012 of four counts of conspiracy and securities fraud, and acquitted on two counts, resulting from his board memberships atGoldman Sachs and Proctor & Gamble while a senior partner emeritus of McKinsey.^[74] In October 2011, he was arrested by the FBI on criminal charges of sharing insider information from these confidential board meetings with Rajaratnam.^[75][76] Gupta was convicted, among other crimes, of passing information to Rajaratnam within 4 minutes of the completion of a special Goldman Sachs board meeting to approve a capital injection by Warren Buffett during the height of the financial crisis in 2008. He stood to profit as the chairman of Galleon International and as the chairman of New Silk Route.^[77] At least twice, Gupta used a McKinsey phone to call Rajaratnam and retained other perks — an office, assistant, and $6 million retirement salary that year^[78] — as a senior partner emeritus.^[79]

After the scandal McKinsey performed an independent review of its policies and procedures, including investigating other partners' ties to Gupta.^[80][81] There is no evidence of any damage to McKinsey's brand, though the firm has came under controversy for having former leading senior partners (Gupta and Kumar) as well as a junior partner (Palecek) all implicated with the Galleon Group and insider trading.^[82] The firm's revenues grew 10% during the same period, though its long term impact remains unknown.

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Deloitte

Deloitte & Touche

Type	UK private company, limited by guarantee
Industry	Professional services
Founded	London, England, U.K. (1845)
Founder(s)	William Welch Deloitte
Headquarters	Paramount Plaza, New York City, New York,U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Stephen Almond (Chairman) Barry Salzberg (CEO)[1]
Services	Audit Consulting Financial advisory Tax Enterprise Risk
Revenue	US$28.8 billion (2011)
Employees	182,000 (September 2011)
Website	Deloitte.com/global

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited ( /dəˈlɔɪt/), commonly referred to as Deloitte, is one of the Big Four professional services firms along withPricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Ernst & Young, and KPMG.

Deloitte is the second largest professional services network in the world by revenue and has 182,000 employees in more than 150 countries providingaudit, tax, consulting, enterprise risk and financial advisory services.^[2] In FY 2011, Deloitte earned a record $28.8 billion USD in revenues, ranking second behind PwC's record $29.2 billion.^[3]

In 2012, it is reported that in the U.K. Deloitte has the largest number of clients amongst FTSE 250 companies.^[4]

Its global headquarters is located in New York City, United States.^[5]

According to the company website, Deloitte now refers to the brand under which independent firms throughout the world collaborate to provide audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk management, and tax services to selected clients.^[22]

In 2008, Deloitte adopted its new “Always One Step Ahead” (AOSA) brand positioning platform to support the existing Deloitte vision: “To be the Standard of Excellence”. AOSA represents the global organization’s value proposition, and is never used as a tagline. The recent launch of the Green Dot ad campaign also aligns with Deloitte’s brand strategy and positioning framework.^[23]Deloitte offers its staff a variety of career models to choose from based on their preferences, geographic location and business need. These career models also vary for each function. Traditional titles for Consulting are "analyst" through "principal", FAS has "associate" through "partner", and the delivery-focused track features "specialist" through "specialist leader".Deloitte hires entry-level personnel to client-facing functions through their graduate recruitment programs at selected universities.The organization is consistently rated by Fortune as one of their "100 Best Companies To Work For".In 2007 and 2009, Deloitte was rated the number one place to launch your career by BusinessWeek.

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KPMG

KPMG

Type	Swiss Cooperative
Industry	Professional services
Founded	1987; merger of Peat Marwick International and Klynveld Main Goerdeler
Headquarters	Amstelveen, Netherlands[1]
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Michael Andrew (Chairman)
Products	Assurance Tax Advisory Consulting Financial Advisory Actuarial Legal
Revenue	US$22.7 billion (2011)[2]
Employees	145,000 (2011)[2]
Website	KPMG.com

KPMG is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the Big Four auditors, along with Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY) andPwC. Its global headquarters is located in Amstelveen, Netherlands.^[1]

KPMG employs 145,000 people^[2] and has three lines of services: audit, tax, and advisory. Its advisory services are further divided into three service groups - Management Consulting, Risk Consulting, and Transaction & Restructuring.

The firm was established in 1870 when William Barclay Peat formed an accounting firm in London.^[3] In 1877 accountancy firm Thomson McLintock opened an office in Glasgow^[3] and in 1911 William Barclay Peat & Co. and Marwick Mitchell & Co. merged to form Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co, later known as Peat Marwick.

Global structure

Each national KPMG firm is an independent legal entity and is a member of KPMG International Cooperative, a Swiss entity registered in the SwissCanton of Zug. KPMG International changed its legal structure from a Swiss Verein to a co-operative under Swiss law in 2003. 
This structure in which the Cooperative provides support services only to the member firms is similar to other professional services networks. The member firms provide the services to client. The purpose is to limit the liability of each independent member.^[14]Each national KPMG firm is an independent legal entity and is a member of KPMG International Cooperative, a Swiss entity registered in the SwissCanton of Zug. KPMG International changed its legal structure from a Swiss Verein to a co-operative under Swiss law in 2003.

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Ernst & Young

Ernst & Young (EY)

Type	Member firms have different legal structures, USA and UK:Limited Liability Partnership
Industry	Professional services
Founded	1989; individual components from 1849
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom[1]
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Jim Turley (Chairman & CEO)[2]
Services	Audit Tax Financial Advisory Consultancy
Revenue	US$22.9  billion[3]
Employees	152,000 (2011)
Divisions	Assurance, Advisory, Tax, Transactions
Website	EY.com

Ernst & Young (EY) is one of the largest professional service firms in the world and one of the "Big Four" accounting firms, along with Deloitte, KPMGand PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Ernst & Young is a global organization of member firms in more than 140 countries, headquartered in London, UK.^[4] It was ranked by Forbesmagazine as the 8th largest private company in the United States in 2011.^[5]

Ernst & Young is the result of a series of mergers of ancestor organizations. The oldest originating partnership was founded in 1849 in England as Harding & Pullein.^[6] In that year the firm was joined by Frederick Whinney. He was made a partner in 1859 and with his sons in the business it was renamed Whinney Smith & Whinney in 1894.^[6]

In 1903, the firm of Ernst & Ernst was established in Cleveland by Alwin C. Ernst and his brother Theodore and in 1906 Arthur Young & Co. was set up by the Scotsman Arthur Young in Chicago.^[6]

As early as 1924 these American firms allied with prominent British firms, Young with Broads Paterson & Co. and Ernst with Whinney Smith & Whinney.^[6]In 1979 this led to the formation of Anglo-American Ernst & Whinney, creating the fourth largest accountancy firm in the world.^[6] Also in 1979, the European offices of Arthur Young merged with several large local European firms, which became member firms of Arthur Young International.In 1989, the number four firm Ernst & Whinney merged with the then number five, Arthur Young, on a global basis to create Ernst & Young.^[7]

EY is the most globally managed of the Big Four firms. EY Global sets global standards and oversees global policy and consistency of service, with client work being performed by its member firms.

Each EY member country is organised as part of one of four areas.^[14] This is different from other professional services networks which are more centrally managed.

The four areas are: EMEIA:i)Europe, Middle East, India and Africa,ii) Americas,iii) Asia-Pacific 7 iv)Japan

Each area has an identical business structure and one management team that is led by an Area Managing Partner is part of the Global Executive board. The aim of this structure is to effectively cater for an increasingly global clientele, who have multinational interests.

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Boston Consulting Group

The Boston Consulting Group

Type	Partnership
Industry	Management consulting
Founded	1963
Headquarters	Boston, Massachusetts, United States 77 offices in 42 countries
Key people	Hans-Paul Bürkner, President & CEO
Products	Management consulting services
Revenue	US$ 3.55 billion (2011)BCG.com
Employees	5,600 (consultants) BCG.com
Website	bcg.com

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a global management consulting firm with 77 offices in 42 countries. It is recognized as one of the most prestigious management consulting firms in the world.^[1] It is one of only three companies to appear in the top 15 of Fortune's "Best Companies to Work For" report for seven consecutive years.^[2] In the 2011 and 2012 lists, BCG is listed as the second best company to work for, and is the only top-tier consulting firm to appear in the top 100.^[3] BCG is also the only firm to have been listed every year in Consulting Magazine's "Best Firms to Work For" list, since the magazine's inception in 2001.^[4]

The company was formed by Bruce D. Henderson, a Vanderbilt University and Harvard Business School alumnus. After many years in the purchasing department of Westinghouse in Pittsburgh (where pricing behavior gave him the idea of the experience curve), he joined Arthur D. Little in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was then recruited by The Boston Company, where he founded a one-man, one-telephone consulting unit he named Boston Consulting Group. In 1975, Henderson arranged an employee stock ownership plan, and employees took the company independent from The Boston Company.^[5] The buyout of all shares was completed in 1979. 

Concepts developed

[edit]"Growth-share matrix"

Main article: Growth-share matrix

BCG matrix of example data set

In 1968, BCG created the "growth-share matrix", a simple chart to assist large corporations in deciding how to allocate cash among their business units. The corporation would categorize its business units as "Stars", "Cash Cows", "Question Marks", and "Dogs" (originally "Pets"), and then allocate cash accordingly, moving money from "cash cows" toward "stars" and "question marks" that had higher market growth rates, and hence higher upside potential.^[7][8]

[edit]"Experience curve"

Main article: Experience curve effects

The experience curve illustrates that the more often a task is performed the lower will be the cost of doing it. The task can be the production of any good or service. Each time cumulative volume doubles, value-added costs (including administration, marketing, distribution, and manufacturing) fall by a constant and predictable percentage.

BCG founder, Bruce Henderson, expounded the implications of the experience curve for strategy.^[9] BCG research concluded that because relatively low cost of operations is a very powerful strategic advantage, firms should capitalize on these learning and experience effects.^[10]

[edit]Advantage matrix

For more details on this topic, see Boston Consulting Group's Advantage Matrix.

In this matrix, the two axes are economies of scale and differentiation. The four quadrants formed are called "Volume", "Stalemated", "Specialized", and "Fragmented".

[edit]Recruiting

BCG typically hires for Associate or Consultant positions. While so-called "lateral hires" as Project Leader, Principal or Partner are possible, they are not the norm. In the United States, BCG recruits undergraduates to join as Associates from about a dozen institutions, and hiring is extremely competitive, with fewer than 1% of candidates given offers. Top-performing Associates receive sponsorship to pursue an MBA, returning to BCG upon completion

Bain & Company

Bain & Company

Type	Incorporated partnership
Industry	Management consulting
Founded	1973
Headquarters	Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Key people	Orit Gadiesh (Chairman of the Board) Bob Bechek (Worldwide Managing Director-elect)
Products	Management consulting services
Revenue	$3.5 billion (est. 2010)
Employees	5,500 employees worldwide
Website	www.bain.com

Bain & Company is a global management consulting firm headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Bain has 48 offices in 31 countries^[1] and more than 5,500 employees. It is considered one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world,^[2] ranks first on the Vault Consulting 50,^[3] and has been named the Best Firm to Work For by Consulting Magazine for nine consecutive years.

Bain & Company was established in 1973 by a group of seven former partners and managers from the Boston Consulting Group headed by Bill Bain. The company was originally headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts on Militia Drive. By the end of the decade, the firm's headquarters were in Faneuil Hall Marketplace in downtown Boston.

Under Bain's direction, the firm implemented a number of unconventional practices in its early years. Notably, Bain & Co. would only work with one client per industry to avoid potential conflicts of interest.^[5] Partners did not carry business cards and clients were referred to by code names, further demonstrating its reputation for enforcing client confidentiality. The company preferred to win work by boardroom referrals rather than marketing itself, sometimes landing clients by offering several weeks of work at no cost until proving the results of its services. Bain consultants preferred to work on increasing a company's market value rather than simply handing clients a list of recommendations.^[6] To win business, Bain demonstrated the increase in the stock price of their clients relative to the Dow Jones Industrial Average

.The new millennium also brought changes to Bain's traditional generalist approach to solving client issues. Due to increasing specialization in the consulting industry, the firm developed niche "Practice Areas" in order to better serve the varying needs of its increasingly diverse multinational and local client base. Through targeted industry hires, Bain added industry experts to each of these "Practice Areas", significantly raising its profile in fields such as financial services, healthcare, information technology and media/entertainment.

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Booz & Company

Booz & Company

Type	Private
Industry	Management consulting
Founded	1914, by Edwin Booz
Headquarters	101 Park Avenue, Manhattan, New York City, New York,U.S.
Number of locations	60 offices in 33 countries
Key people	Cesare Mainardi (CEO) Joe Saddi (Chairman)
Revenue	$1.3+ billion (2011)
Employees	3,000[1]
Website	www.booz.com

Booz & Company is a global management consulting firm established in the United States in 1914.^[2] It is recognized as one of the most prestigious management consulting firms in the world^[3] and one of the best consulting firms to work for by Consulting Magazine.^[4] Booz and Company is among the top recruiters of graduates of the top-ranked business schools in the world, in addition to hiring first-rate people with advanced degrees in science, medicine, engineering and law.

The company has 60 offices in 33 countries and consults to the world’s top businesses, governments and organizations. 75 of the world's largest 100 corporations are Booz and Company clients and the firm has been involved in some of the most celebrated business episodes of their day, including the dawn of the contract system for Hollywood movies, the merger of the National and American football leagues, and the rescue of the Chrysler corporation from bankruptcy.^[5]

The company was spun off from Booz Allen Hamilton in conjunction with a private equity takeover by The Carlyle Group in 2008.^[6] The firm represents the commercial portion of the consulting business, as well as all consulting operations with government entitites outside the United States. Booz Allen Hamilton was then focused exclusively on U.S. government consulting endeavors. However, as Booz Allen Hamilton's three-year noncompete provision has expired, it is now building out its commercial consulting practice anew.The firm publishes the majority of its thought leadership in its quarterly management magazine Strategy+Business, which in 2009 was one of just two business magazines to grow its circulation, along with The Economist.^[13] The publication's founding Editor-in-Chief Joel Kurtzman was a former Harvard Business Review Editor-in-Chief. While at Strategy+Business, he coined the widely-used term thought leader.^[13]

In 2010, the independent White Space report on consulting firms' thought leadership, ranked Booz as first in foresight because of "the consistently interesting and topical writing in strategy+business".^[14]

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Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: AMZN NASDAQ-100 Component S&P 500 Component
Founded	1994
Headquarters	Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Founder(s)	Jeff Bezos
Key people	Jeff Bezos (Chairman, President & CEO)
Industry	Internet, Online retailing Cloud computing
Products	A2Z Development, A9.com,Alexa Internet, Amazon.com,Amazon Kindle, Amazon Studios, Amazon Web Services, Audible.com,dpreview.com, Endless.com,IMDb, LoveFilm, Zappos.com,Woot, Junglee.com
Revenue	US$ 48.07 billion (2011)[1]
Operating income	US$ 862 million (2011)[1]
Net income	US$ 631 million (2011)[1]
Total assets	US$ 25.27 billion (2011)[1]
Total equity	US$ 7.75 billion (2011)[1]
Employees	65,600 (2012 Q1)[2]
Website	Amazon.com (original US site) various national sites
Alexa rank	10 (July 2012)[3]
Type of site	E-commerce
Advertising	Web banners, Videos
Available in	English, French, German,Spanish, Italian, Japanese,Chinese
Launched	1995

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is an American multinational electronic commerce company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer.^[4] The company also produces consumer electronics - notably the Amazon Kindle e-book reader - and is a major provider of cloud computing services.

Amazon has separate retail websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Indiaand China, with international shipping to certain other countries for some of its products. It is also expected to launch its websites in Poland,^[5]Netherlands and Sweden.^[6]

Jeff Bezos incorporated the company (as Cadabra) in July 1994, and the site went online as amazon.com in 1995.^[7] The company was renamed after the Amazon River, one of the largest rivers in the world,^[7] which in turn was named after Amazons, the legendary nation of female warriors in Greek mythology. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, software, video games,electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry.Amazon was incorporated in 1994, in the state of Washington. In July 1995, the company began service and sold its first book on Amazon.com —Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.^[11] In 1996, it was reincorporated in Delaware. Amazon issued its initial public offering of stock on May 15, 1997, trading under the NASDAQ stock exchange symbolAMZN, at a price of US$18.00 per share ($1.50 after three stock splits in the late 1990s).

Amazon's initial business plan was unusual. The company did not expect a profit for four to five years. Its "slow" growth provoked stockholder complaints that the company was not reaching profitability fast enough. When the dot-com bubble burst, and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon persevered, and finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001: $5 million or 1¢ per share, on revenues of more than $1 billion. The profit, although it was modest, served to demonstrate that the business model could be profitable.^[12] In 1999, Time magazine named Bezos the Person of the Year, recognizing the company's success in popularizing online shopping.Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002, which provides programmatic access to latent features on its website. Amazon Web Services (AWS) was first launched as a public beta of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud running Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server.^[96] This was later expanded to several operating systems, including various flavors of Linux and OpenSolaris. Over the last decade,^[when?] Amazon has developed a customer base of around 30 million people. Amazon.com is primarily a retail site with a sales revenue model. Amazon makes its money by taking a small percentage of the sale price of each item that is sold through its website. Amazon also allows companies to advertise their products by paying to be listed as featured products.^[124]

eBay

eBay Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: EBAY NASDAQ-100 Component S&P 500 Component
Founded	September 3, 1995
Headquarters	San Jose, California, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Founder(s)	Pierre Omidyar
Key people	John Donahoe (CEO) Pierre Omidyar (Chairman)
Industry	Internet, Online retailing
Products	eBayClassifieds, electronic commerce, Gumtree, Kijiji,online auction hosting, PayPal, shopping mall
Revenue	US$ 11.651 billion (2011)[1]
Operating income	US$ 2.373 billion (2011)[1]
Net income	US$ 3.229 billion (2011)[1]
Total assets	US$ 27.320 billion (2011)[1]
Total equity	US$ 17.929 billion (2011)[1]
Employees	27,770 (2011)[1]
Slogan	"World's Online Marketplace." "Connecting buyers and sellers globally." "What ever it is, you can get it on eBay." "Buy it, sell it, love it" "Buy it New, Buy it Now"
Website	eBay.com
IPv6 support	No
Alexa rank	21 (July 2012)[2]
Type of site	Online auction
Registration	Required to buy and sell
Available in	Multilingual
[show]Screenshot

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) is an American multinational internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auctionand shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide. Founded in 1995, eBay is one of the notable success stories of the dot-com bubble; it is now a multi-billion dollar business with operations localized in over thirty countries.^[3][4] eBay expanded from its original "set-time" auction format to include "Buy It Now" standard shopping; shopping by UPC, ISBN, or other kind of SKU (viaHalf.com); online classified advertisements (via Kijiji or eBay Classifieds); online event ticket trading (via StubHub); online money transfers (viaPayPal)^[5] and other services.

Bidding on eBay's auction-style listings is called proxy bidding and is essentially equivalent to a Vickrey auction, with the following exceptions.

• The winning bidder pays the second-highest bid plus one bid increment amount (that is, some small predefined amount relative to the bid size), instead of simply the second-highest bid. However, since the bid increment amounts are relatively insignificant compared to the bid size, they are not considered from a strategic standpoint.^[33]
• The highest bidder's bid is sealed, as in a Vickrey auction, but the current winning bid (second highest plus one increment) is displayed throughout the auction to allow price discovery
• .As eBay is a huge, publicly visible market, it has created a great deal of interest from economists, who have used it to analyze many aspects of buying and selling behavior, auction formats, etc., and compare these with previous theoretical and empirical findings.
• eBay is a data-driven company which processes 50 petabytes of data a day.^[52]
  eBay uses a system that allows different departments in the company to check out data from their data mart into sandboxes for analysis. According to Goul, eBay has already experienced significant business successes through its data analytics. name="knowwpc" /> To continue improving the business through data-driven decision making, eBay employees 5,000 data analysts.
  On May 8, 2008, eBay announced the opening of its newest building on the company's North Campus in San Jose, which is the first structure in the city to be built from the ground up to LEEDGold standards.The building is equipped with a lighting system that detects natural ambient light sources and automatically dims artificial lighting to save 39 percent of the power usually required to light an office building.^[78] eBay's newest building also reduces demand on local water supplies by incorporating an eco-friendly irrigation system, low-flow shower heads, and low-flow faucets.^[78]Even during construction, more than 75 percent of the waste from construction was recycled.^[78] eBay also runs buses between San Francisco and the San Jose campus to reduce the number of commuting vehicles
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  Yahoo!

  Yahoo! Inc.

  Type	Public
  Traded as	NASDAQ: YHOO NASDAQ-100 Component S&P 500 Component
  Industry	Internet
  Founded	Santa Clara, California, U.S. (March 1, 1995)
  Founder(s)	Jerry Yang, David Filo
  Headquarters	Sunnyvale, California, U.S.
  Area served	Worldwide
  Key people	Fred Amoroso (Chairman) Marissa Mayer (CEO)
  Products	See Yahoo! products
  Revenue	US$ 4.98 billion (2011)[1]
  Operating income	US$ 800 million (2011)[1]
  Net income	US$ 1.04 billion (2011)[1]
  Total assets	US$ 14.78 billion (2011)[1]
  Total equity	US$ 12.53 billion (2011)[1]
  Employees	12,000 (May 2012)[2]
  Subsidiaries	Yahoo! subsidiaries
  Website	Yahoo.com

  
  
  Yahoo! operates the web portal which provides content including the latest news, entertainment, and sports information. The portal also gives users access to other Yahoo! services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Maps, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Groups and Yahoo! Messenger.
  Yahoo! Inc. was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated on March 1, 1995. On January 13, 2009, Yahoo! appointed Carol Bartz, former executive chairman of Autodesk, as its new chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors.^[7] On September 6, 2011, Bartz was removed from her position at Yahoo! by chairman Roy Bostock and CFO Tim Morse was named as Interim CEO of the company.^[8][9] On January 4, 2012, Scott Thompson, former President of PayPal, was named the new chief executive officer.^[10] On May 13, 2012, Scott Thompson was replaced by Ross Levinsohn as the company's interim CEO.^[11] On July 16 2012, former Google executive Marissa Mayer was named as Yahoo! CEO and President, effective July 17.^[12] Yahoo has averaged one CEO a year for the last five years.Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine (Yahoo! Search), Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance,Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping, video sharing, fantasy sports and social media website and services. It is one of the largest websites in the United States.^[3] According to news sources, roughly 700 million people visit Yahoo! websites every month.^[4][5] Yahoo! itself claims it attracts "more than half a billion consumers every month in more than 30 languages."
  
  
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  PayPal

PayPal Inc.

Type	Subsidiary of eBay Inc.
Founded	Palo Alto, California, USA (1998)
Headquarters	San Jose, California, USA
Area served	Worldwide
Founder(s)	Ken Howery Max Levchin Elon Musk Luke Nosek Peter Thiel
Key people	Patrick Dupuis, CFO David Marcus, President
Revenue	US$4.4 billion (2011)
Owner	eBay Inc.
Website	https://www.paypal.com
Alexa rank	37 (July 2012)[1]
Advertising	Yes
Registration	Optional
Available in	Multilingual
Current status	Active
[show]Screenshot

eBay's North First Street satellite office campus (home to PayPal's corporate headquarters)

PayPal is a global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders.

Originally, a PayPal account could be funded with an electronic debit from a bank account or by a credit card at the payer's choice. But some time in 2010 or early 2011, PayPal began to require a verified bank account after the account holder exceeded a predetermined spending limit. After that point, PayPal will attempt to take funds for a purchase from funding sources according to a specified funding hierarchy. If you set one of the funding sources as Primary, it will default to that, within that level of the hierarchy (for example, if your credit card ending in 4567 is set as the Primary over 1234, it will still attempt to pay money out of your PayPal balance, before it attempts to charge your credit card). The funding hierarchy is (1) a balance in the PayPal account; (2) a PayPal credit account, PayPal Extras, PayPal SmartConnect, PayPal Extras MasterCard or Bill Me Later (if selected as primary funding source) (It can bypass the Balance); (3) a verified bank account; (4) other funding sources, such as non-PayPal credit cards.^[2]

The recipient of a PayPal transfer can either request a check from PayPal, establish their own PayPal deposit account or request a transfer to their bank account.

PayPal is an acquirer, performing payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other commercial users, for which it charges a fee. It may also charge a fee for receiving money, proportional to the amount received. The fees depend on the currency used, the payment option used, the country of the sender, the country of the recipient, the amount sent and the recipient's account type.^[3] In addition, eBay purchases made by credit card through PayPal may incur extra fees if the buyer and seller use different currencies.

On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay.^[4] Its corporate headquarters are in San Jose, California, United States at eBay's North First Street satellite office campus. The company also has significant operations in Omaha, Nebraska, Scottsdale, Arizona, and Austin, Texas, in the United States, Chennai, Dublin, Kleinmachnow (near Berlin) and Tel Aviv. As of July 2007, across Europe, PayPal also operates as a Luxembourg-based bank.

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Google

Google Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: GOOGFWB: GGQ1 NASDAQ-100 Component S&P 500 Component
Industry	Internet, Computer software
Founded	Menlo Park, California, U.S. (September 4, 1998)[1][2]
Founder(s)	Sergey Brin, Larry Page
Headquarters	Googleplex, Mountain View, California, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Larry Page (Co-founder & CEO) Eric Schmidt (Executive Chairman) Sergey Brin (Co-Founder)
Products	See list of Google products.
Revenue	US$ 37.905 billion (2011)
Operating income	US$ 11.632 billion (2011)
Profit	US$ 9.737 billion (2011)
Total assets	US$ 72.574 billion (2011)
Total equity	US$ 58.145 billion (2011)
Employees	54,604 (2012)[3]
Subsidiaries	AdMob, DoubleClick, Motorola Mobility, On2 Technologies,Picnik, YouTube, Zagat
Website	Google.com
References: [4]

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is an American multinational corporation which provides Internet-related products and services, including Internet search, cloud computing, software and advertising technologies.^[5] Advertising revenues from AdWords generate almost all of the company's profits.^[6][7]

The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while both attended Stanford University. Together, Brin and Page own about 16 percent of the company's stake. Google was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998, and its initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. The company's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful",^[8] and the company's unofficial slogan is "Don't be evil".^[9][10] In 2006, the company moved to its current headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond the company's core web search engine. The company offers online productivity software including email, an office suite, and social networking. Google's products extend to the desktop as well, with applications for web browsing, organizing & editing photos, and instant messaging. Google leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, as well as the Google Chrome OS browser-only operating system,^[11] found on specialized netbooks called Chromebooks.

Google has been estimated to run over one million servers in data centers around the world,^[12] and process over one billion search requests^[13] and about twenty-four petabytes of user-generated data every day.^{[14][15][16][17]}

As of September 2009 Alexa listed the main U.S.-focused google.com site as the Internet's most visited website, and numerous international Google sites as being in the top hundred, as well as several other Google-owned sites such as YouTube, Blogger and Orkut.^[18] Google also ranks number two in the BrandZ brand equity database.^[19] The dominant market position of Google's services has led to criticism of the company over issues including privacy, copyright, and censorship.

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California.^[23]

While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites.^[24] They called this new technology PageRank, where a website's relevance was determined by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site.^[25][26]

A small search engine called "RankDex" from IDD Information Services designed by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site-scoring and page ranking.^[27] The technology in RankDex would be patented^[28] and used later when Li founded Baidu in China.^[29][30]

Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site.^[31][32][33]

Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word "googol",^[34][35] the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine wants to provide large quantities of information for people.^[36] Originally, Google ran under the Stanford University website, with the domain google.stanford.edu.^[37]

Ninety-nine percent of Google's revenue is derived from its advertising programs.^[109] For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues.^[110] Google has implemented various innovations in the online advertising market that helped make it one of the biggest brokers in the market. Using technology from the company DoubleClick, Google can determine user interests and target advertisements so they are relevant to their context and the user that is viewing them.^[111][112] Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page.^[113] Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google's AdWords allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website, and earn money every time ads are clicked.^[114]

Most of Google's revenue is derived from its advertising programs.Google has implemented various innovations in the online advertising market that helped make it one of the biggest brokers in the market. Using technology from the company DoubleClick, Google can determine user interests and target advertisements so they are relevant to their context and the user that is viewing them.^[111][112] Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page.^[113] Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google's AdWords allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website, and earn money every time ads are clicked.^[114]

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Facebook

Facebook

Screenshot [show]
URL	Facebook.com
Type of site	Social networking service
Registration	Required
Availablelanguage(s)	Multilingual (70)
Users	901 million[1] (active April 2012)
Owner	Facebook, Inc.
Created by	Mark Zuckerberg Eduardo Saverin Andrew McCollum Dustin Moskovitz Chris Hughes
Launched	February 4, 2004
Alexa rank	2 (July 2012)[2]
Revenue	Advertising
Current status	Active

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc.^[3] As of May 2012, Facebook has over 900 million active users, more than half of them using Facebook on a mobile device.^[4] Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends". The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other. Facebook allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old to become registered users of the site.^[5]

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitzand Chris Hughes.^[6] The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. However, according to a May 2011 Consumer Reports survey, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts and 5 million under 10, violating the site's terms of service.^[7]

A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users.^[8]Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"^[9] Critics, such as Facebook Detox,^[10] state that Facebook has turned into a national obsession that results in vast amounts of time lost and innately encourages narcissism. Quantcast estimates Facebook has 138.9 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in May 2011.^[11] According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S. population had a Facebook account.^[12] Nevertheless, Facebook's market growth started to stall in some regions, with the site losing 7 million active users in the United States and Canada in May 2011.^[13] Facebook purchased fb.com on January 11, 2011 for 8.5 million dollars making the acquisition of FB.com one of the ten highest domain sales in history. Again in 2012 it bought the photo sharing website Instagram for 1 billion dollars.

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LinkedIn

LinkedIn Corporation

Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: LNKD
Founded	Santa Monica, California (2003)
Headquarters	Mountain View, California, US
Area served	Worldwide
Founder(s)	Reid Hoffman Allen Blue Konstantin Guericke Eric Ly Jean-Luc Vaillant
Key people	Reid Hoffman (Executive Chairman) Jeff Weiner (CEO)
Industry	Internet
Revenue	$522 million (2011)[1]
Employees	2,447 (2012)[1]
Slogan	Relationships Matter
Website	www.linkedin.com
IPv6 support	No
Alexa rank	12 (July 2012)[2]
Type of site	Social network service
Advertising	Google, AdSense
Registration	Required
Users	161 million[3] (February 2012)
Available in	English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Bahasa Indonesia, and Bahasa Malaysia.
Launched	May 5, 2003
Current status	Active
[show]Screenshot

LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) ( /ˌlɪŋkt.ˈɪn/) is a social networking website for people in professional occupations. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003,^[4] it is mainly used for professional networking. As of February 9, 2012, LinkedIn reports more than 150 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories.^[5][6] The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Bahasa Indonesia, and Bahasa Malaysia.^[7][8][9] Quantcast reports LinkedIn has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million globally.^[10] In June 2011, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, up 63 percent from a year earlier and surpassing MySpace.^[11] LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD".^[12]

One purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people with whom they have some level of relationship, called Connections. Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection. However, if the invitee selects "I don't know" or "Spam", this counts against the inviter. If the inviter gets too many of such responses, the account may be restricted or closed.^[43]

This list of connections can then be used in a number of ways:

• A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, the connections of each of their connections (termed second-degree connections) and also the connections of second-degree connections (termed third-degree connections). This can be used to gain an introduction to someone a person wishes to know through a mutual contact.
• Users can upload their resume or design their own profile in order to showcase work and community experiences.
• It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one's contact network.
• Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.
• Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them.
• Users can post their own photos and view photos of others to aid in identification.
• Users can now follow different companies and can get notification about the new joining and offers available.
• Users can save (i.e. bookmark) jobs which they would like to apply for.

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IBM

International Business Machines Corporation

Logo designed by Paul Rand in 1972, but has been replaced with newer (black) logo.
Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: IBM Dow Jones Component S&P 500 Component
Industry	Computer hardware,Computer software, IT services, IT consulting
Founded	Endicott, New York, U.S. (June 16, 1911)
Founder(s)	Charles Ranlett Flint
Headquarters	Armonk, New York, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Samuel Palmisano (Chairman) Ginni Rometty (President and CEO)
Products	See IBM products
Revenue	US$ 106.91 billion (2011)[1]
Operating income	US$ 20.28 billion (2011)[1]
Net income	US$ 15.85 billion (2011)[1]
Total assets	US$ 116.43 billion (2011)[1]
Total equity	US$ 20.13 billion (2011)[1]
Employees	433,362 (2012)[2]
Divisions	Financing, Hardware, Services, Software
Website	IBM.com

International Business Machines Corporation, or IBM, is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered inArmonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.^[3]

The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation through a merger of three companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, and the Computing Scale Corporation.^[4][5] CTR adopted the name International Business Machines in 1924, using a name previously designated to CTR's subsidiary in Canada and later South America. Its distinctive culture and product branding has given it the nickname Big Blue.

In 2012, Fortune ranked IBM the #2 largest U.S. firm in terms of number of employees (433,362),^[2] the #4 largest in terms of market capitalization,^[6]the #9 most profitable,^[7] and the #19 largest firm in terms of revenue.^[8] Globally, the company was ranked the #31 largest in terms of revenue byForbes for 2011.^[9][10] Other rankings for 2011/2012 include #1 company for leaders (Fortune), #1 green company worldwide (Newsweek), #2 best global brand (Interbrand), #2 most respected company (Barron's), #5 most admired company (Fortune), and #18 most innovative company (Fast Company).^[11]

IBM holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company, and has nine research laboratories worldwide.^[12] Its employees have garnered five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, nine National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science^[13] Famous inventions by IBM include the automated teller machine (ATM), the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, the magnetic stripe card, the relational database, the Universal Product Code (UPC), the financial swap, SABRE airline reservation system, DRAM, and Watson artificial intelligence.

The company has undergone several organizational changes since its inception, acquiring companies like SPSS (2009) and PwC consulting (2002),spinning off companies like Lexmark (1991), and selling off product lines like ThinkPad to Lenovo (2005).

Sam Palmisano stepped down as chief executive officer on January 1, 2012, but retained his position as chairman. He was replaced by veteran IBMerGinni Rometty.^[14][15]

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Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard Company

Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: HPQ Dow Jones Component S&P 500 Component
Industry	Computer hardware,Computer software, IT consulting, IT services
Founded	1939 (Palo Alto)
Founder(s)	Bill Hewlett, David Packard
Headquarters	Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Raymond Lane (Executive Chairman) Meg Whitman (President & CEO)
Products	See list of HP products.
Revenue	US$ 127.24 billion (2011)[1]
Operating income	US$ 9.67 billion (2011)[1]
Net income	US$ 7.07 billion (2011)[1]
Total assets	US$ 129.51 billion (2011)[1]
Total equity	US$ 38.62 billion (2011)[1]
Employees	349,600 (2011)[1]
Divisions	Financing, Hardware, Services, Software
Subsidiaries	List of subsidiaries
Website	HP.com

Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ) or HP is an American multinational hardware and software corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. It provides products, technologies, software, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health and education sectors.

The company was founded in a one-car garage in Palo Alto by William (Bill) Redington Hewlett and Dave Packard. HP is the world's leading PC manufacturer. It specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware, designing software and delivering services. Major product lines include personal computing devices, enterprise, and industry standard servers, related storage devices, networking products, software and a diverse range of printers, and other imaging products. HP markets its products to households, small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprises directly as well as via online distribution, consumer-electronics and office-supply retailers, software partners and major technology vendors. HP also has strong services and consulting business around its products and partner products.

Major company events have included the spin-off of part of its business as Agilent Technologies in 1999, its merger with Compaq in 2002, and the acquisition of EDS in 2008, which led to combined revenues of $118.4 billion in 2008 and a Fortune 500 ranking of 9 in 2009.^[2] In November 2009, HP announced the acquisition of 3Com,^[3] with the deal closing on April 12, 2010.^[4] On April 28, 2010, HP announced the buyout of Palm for $1.2 billion.^[5] On September 2, 2010, HP won its bidding war for 3PAR with a $33 a share offer ($2.07 billion) which Dell declined to match.^[6]

HP is recognized as the symbolic founder of Silicon Valley, although it did not actively investigate semiconductor devices until a few years after the "traitorous eight" had abandoned William Shockley to create Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. Hewlett-Packard's HP Associates division, established around 1960, developed semiconductor devices primarily for internal use. Instruments and calculators were some of the products using these devices.

In May 2010, HP was named one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere Institute. This is the second year in a row HP has made the list. Ethisphere reviewed, researched and analyzed thousands of nominations in more than 100 countries and 35 industries to create the 2010 list. HP was one of only 100 companies to earn the distinction of top winner and was the only computer hardware vendor to be recognized. Ethisphere honors firms that promote ethical business standards and practices by going beyond legal minimums, introducing innovative ideas that benefit the public.^[69]

HP is listed in Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics that ranks electronics manufacturers according to their policies on sustainability, energy and climate and green products. In November 2011, HP secured the 1st place (out of 15) in this ranking (climbing up 3 places) with an increased score of 5.9 (up from 5.5). It scored most points on the new Sustainable Operations criteria, having the best programme for measuring and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from its suppliers and scoring maximum points for its thorough paper procurement policy.^[70]

Moreover, HP does especially well for its disclosure of externally verified greenhouse gas emissions and its setting of targets for reducing them.^[71] However, Greenpeace reports that HP risks a penalty point in future editions due to the fact that it is a member of trade associations that have commented against energy efficiency standards.^[70]

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Wipro

Wipro Limited

Type	Public limited company
Traded as	BSE: 507685 NSE: WIPRO NYSE: WIT BSE SENSEX Constituent
Industry	IT services, IT consulting
Founded	Amalner, Maharashtra (December 1945)
Founder(s)	M.H. Hasham Premji
Headquarters	Bangalore, India
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Azim Premji (Chairman)
Services	IT, business consulting andoutsourcing services
Revenue	US$ 7.30 billion (2012)[1]
Operating income	US$ 1.25 billion (2012)[1]
Profit	US$ 1.09 billion (2012)[1]
Total assets	US$ 8.55 billion (2012)[1]
Total equity	US$ 5.60 billion (2012)[1]
Employees	135,920 (2012)
Divisions	Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting Wipro Infrastructure Engineering Wipro GE Medical Systems Limited Wipro Technology Services Limited
Website	www.wipro.com

Wipro Limited (formerly Western India Products Limited) (NASDAQ: WIT, NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685) is an Indian multinational provider of Information technology (IT) services, consulting and outsourcing services. It is headquartered in Bangalore, India.^[2][3] As of 2012, the company has over 130,000 employees and a worldwide presence with global centers across 54 countries.^[4]

The company operates in four segments: IT products and services, Consumer care and lighting, Healthcare and Infrastructure engineering.^[5]

Spirit of Wipro

The Spirit of Wipro is the core of Wipro and represents its values and what Wipro aspires to be. These values are

[edit]Intensity to Win

• Make Customers Successful
• Team, Innovate, Excel

[edit]Act with Sensitivity

• Respect the individual
• Thoughtful and responsible

[edit]Unyielding Integrity

• Delivering on commitments
• Honesty and fairness in actions^[43]

The Spirit is an indivisible synthesis of all three statements and means manifesting the three values all the time. Wipro organizes the Spirit of Wipro Run every year in which employees and families are encouraged to participate to celebrate the Wipro spirit.^[44] In 2011, this run was organized over a period of 24 hours across 11 cities in India and 45 overseas locations across five continents – a first in the run’s six year history.

Wipro Technologies, the global IT business of Wipro Limited is a leading Information Technology, consulting and outsourcing company with a comprehensive portfolio of services and an organization wide commitment to sustainability and innovation^[47]. The IT Products segment sells a range of Wipro personal desktop computers, Wipro servers and Wipro notebooks. It is also a value added reseller of desktops, servers, notebooks, storage products, networking solutions and packaged software for international brands^[48].

Wipro entered into the technology business in 1981 and has over 130,000 employees and clients across 54 countries today. ^[49]IT revenues stood at $ 5.9 billion for the year ended March 31, 2012 with a repeat business ratio of over 95%^[50][51].

Wipro Technologies enables clients to respond and change according to business needs, to “do business better” and be future-ready. ^[52]It provides IT services, outsourced R&D, infrastructure services, business process services and business consulting. ^[53]The business model at Wipro Technologies is an industry aligned customer facing model^[54][55][56] which gives greater understanding of customers’ businesses to build industry specific solutions.

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Tata Consultancy Services

Tata Consultancy Services Limited

Type	Public
Traded as	BSE: 532540 NSE: TCS BSE SENSEX Constituent
Industry	IT services, IT consulting
Founded	1968
Founder(s)	JRD Tata
Headquarters	Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Ratan Tata (Chairman) N. Chandrasekaran (CEO & MD) Seturaman Mahalingam (CFO)
Services	IT, business consulting andoutsourcing services
Revenue	US$ 0.0 billion (2012)[1]
Profit	US$ 0 billion (2012)[1]
Employees	243,545 (2012)[1]
Parent	Tata Group
Website	www.tcs.com

Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS) is an Indian provider of information technology (IT) services, business solutions and outsourcing services headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is a subsidiary of Tata Group conglomerate.

One of TCS' first assignments was to provide punched card services to a sister concern, Tata Steel (then TISCO). It later bagged the country's first software project, the Inter-Branch Reconciliation System (IBRS) for the Central Bank of India.^[2] It also provided bureau services to Unit Trust of India, thus becoming one of the first companies to offer BPO services.

• Early 1970s—Tata Consultancy Services started exporting its services.
• 1974— TCS's first international order came from Burroughs Corporation, one of the first business computer manufacturers. TCS was assigned to write code for the Burroughs machines for several US-based clients.^[3] This experience also helped TCS bag its first onsite project—the Institutional Group & Information Company (IGIC), a data center for ten banks, which catered to two million customers in the US, assigned TCS the task of maintaining and upgrading its computer systems.^[3]

Bombay House, the Head Office of theTata Group.

• 1975—TCS counducted its first-ever campus interview which was at IISc,Bangalore. The recruits comprising 12 IITians and 3 IISc graduates were the first to get formal training at the company.^[4]

• 1979—TCS delivered an electronic depository and trading system called SECOM for SIS SegaInterSettle, Switzerland. It was by far the most complex project undertaken by an Indian IT company. TCS followed this up with System X for the Canadian Depository System and also automated the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).^[5] TCS associated with a Swiss partner, TKS Teknosoft, which it later acquired.^[6]

• 1985—The first client-dedicated offshore development center was set up for Compaq (then Tandem).

• 1999—TCS saw outsourcing opportunity in E-Commerce and related solutions and set up its E-Business division with ten people. By 2004, E-Business was contributing half a billion dollars (US) to TCS.^[7]

• August 9, 2004—TCS became a publicly listed company,^[8]

• 2006—TCS designed the ERP for IRCTC.^[9]

• 2011—TCS entered the Small and medium enterprises (SME) market with cloud-based offerings.^[10]

• 2012-TCS became the first Indian IT company to cross the 10 billion dollar revenue milestone.
•  TCS has 19 Innovation Labs based in three countries.^[24]

Intel

Intel Corporation

The current logo, used since 2005.
Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: INTC Euronext: INCO SEHK: 4335 Dow Jones Component NASDAQ-100 Component S&P 500 Component
Industry	Semiconductors
Founded	Mountain View, California, U.S. (July 18, 1968)[1]
Founder(s)	Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce
Headquarters	Santa Clara, California, U.S.[2]
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Andy Bryant (Chairman) Paul Otellini (President and CEO)
Products	Bluetooth chipsets, flash memory, microprocessors,motherboard chipsets,network interface cards
Revenue	US$ 54.0 billion (2011)[3]
Operating income	US$ 17.5 billion (2011)[3]
Net income	US$ 12.9 billion (2011)[3]
Total assets	US$ 71.12 billion (2011)[3]
Total equity	US$ 45.91 billion (2011)[3]
Employees	100,100 (2011)[3]
Website	Intel.com

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) is an American multinational semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States and the world's largest and highest valued semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue.^[4] It is the inventor of the x86 series ofmicroprocessors, the processors found in most personal computers. Intel Corporation, founded on July 18, 1968, is a portmanteau of IntegratedElectronics (the fact that "intel" is the term for intelligence information was also quite suitable).^[5] Intel also makes motherboard chipsets, network interface controllers and integrated circuits, flash memory, graphic chips, embedded processors and other devices related to communications and computing. Founded by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore and widely associated with the executive leadership and vision ofAndrew Grove, Intel combines advanced chip design capability with a leading-edge manufacturing capability. Though Intel was originally known primarily to engineers and technologists, its "Intel Inside" advertising campaign of the 1990s made it and its Pentium processor household names.

Intel was an early developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, and this represented the majority of its business until 1981. Although Intel created the world's first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, it was not until the success of the personal computer (PC) that this became its primary business. During the 1990s, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs fostering the rapid growth of the computer industry. During this period Intel became the dominant supplier of microprocessors for PCs, and was known for aggressive and sometimes illegal tactics in defense of its market position, particularly against Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), as well as a struggle with Microsoft for control over the direction of the PC industry.^[6][7] The 2011 rankings of the world's 100 most valuable brands published by Millward Brown Optimor showed the company's brand value at number 58.^[8]

Intel has also begun research in electrical transmission and generation.^[9][10] Intel has recently introduced a 3-D transistor that may improve performance and energy efficiency.^[11] Intel will be mass producing this 3-D transistor, called Tri-Gate transistors, with their upcoming 22 nm process in the near future.^[12] In 2011, SpectraWatt Inc., a solar cell spinoff of Intel, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11.^[13]

SAP AG

SAP AG

Type	Aktiengesellschaft
Traded as	ISIN: DE0007164600FWB: SAP NYSE: SAP
Industry	Enterprise software
Founded	Weinheim, Germany (1972)
Founder(s)	Dietmar Hopp Hans-Werner Hector Hasso Plattner Klaus Tschira Claus Wellenreuther
Headquarters	Walldorf, Germany
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Hasso Plattner (Chairman) Jim Hagemann Snabe (Co-CEO) Bill McDermott (Co-CEO)
Products	See list of SAP products.
Revenue	€14.233 billion (2011)[1]
Operating income	€4.879 billion (2011)[1]
Profit	€3.438 billion (2011)[1]
Total assets	€23.225 billion (2011)[1]
Total equity	€12.699 billion (2011)[1]
Employees	59,420 (2012)[1]
Website	SAP.com

SAP AG (ISIN: DE0007164600, FWB: SAP, NYSE: SAP) is a German multinational software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations. Headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, with regional offices around the world, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software. The company's best known software products are its enterprise resource planning application (SAP ERP), its enterprise data warehouse solution - SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW), SAP BusinessObjects software, and most recently, Sybase mobile products and in-memory computing appliance SAP HANA. SAP is one of the largest independent software corporations.

SAP was founded in June 1972 as Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung ("System Analysis and Program Development")^[2] by five formerIBM engineers in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg (Dietmar Hopp, Klaus Tschira, Hans-Werner Hector, Hasso Plattner, and Claus Wellenreuther).^[2] The acronym was later changed to stand for Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung ("Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing").

In December 2011, SAP AG agreed to buy SuccessFactors Inc. for $3.4 billion in cash or 52 percent more than the share closing price on 2 December 2011. With the acquisition, SAP AG will become more competitive with Oracle Corp. in the Cloud computing market.^[17]

In May 2012, SAP AG announced to acquire the Sunnyvale, California-based supply chain network operator Ariba Inc. for an estimated $4.3 billion dollars. SAP said it will offer $45 a share. The acquisition is assumed to be completed in the third quarter 2012, subject to approval by Ariba shareholders and regulators.

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Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: MSFT SEHK: 4338 Dow Jones Industrial Averagecomponent NASDAQ-100 component S&P 500 component
Industry	Computer software Online services Video games
Founded	Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States (April 4, 1975)
Founder(s)	Bill Gates, Paul Allen
Headquarters	Microsoft Redmond Campus,Redmond, Washington, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Steve Ballmer (CEO) Bill Gates (Chairman)
Products	See listing
Services	See listing
Revenue	US$ 69.94 billion (2011)[1]
Operating income	US$ 27.16 billion (2011)[1]
Net income	US$ 23.15 billion (2011)[1]
Total assets	US$ 108.7 billion (2011)[1]
Total equity	US$ 57.08 billion (2011)[1]
Employees	90,000 (2011)[1]
Subsidiaries	List of Microsoft subsidiaries
Website	Microsoft.com
References: [2]

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, United States that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services related to computing. The company was founded by Bill Gatesand Paul Allen on April 4, 1975. Microsoft is the world's largest software corporation measured by revenues.

Microsoft was established to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. The company's 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in the share price, created an estimated three billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, the company has increasingly diversified from the operating system market. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype for $8.5 billion in its largest acquisition to date.^[3]

As of 2012, Microsoft is market dominant in both the PC operating system and office suite markets (the latter with Microsoft Office). The company also produces a wide range of software applications for desktops and servers, and is active in areas including internet search (with Bing), the video game industry (with the Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles), the digital services market (through MSN), and mobile phones (via the Windows Phone OS). In June 2012, Microsoft announced that it would be entering the PC vendor market for the first time, with the launch of the Microsoft Surface tablet computer.

In the 1990s, critics began to contend that Microsoft used monopolistic business practices and anti-competitive strategies including refusal to dealand tying, put unreasonable restrictions in the use of its software, and used misrepresentative marketing tactics; both the U.S. Department of Justiceand European Commission found the company in violation of antitrust laws.

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HCL Technologies

HCL Technologies Limited

Type	Public
Traded as	BSE: 532281 NSE: HCLTECH
Industry	IT Services
Founded	12 November 1991
Founder(s)	Shiv Nadar
Headquarters	Noida, India
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Shiv Nadar (Chairman & CSO) Vineet Nayar (VC & CEO)
Services	IT and Outsourcing services
Revenue	16,102 crore (US$3.21 billion)(2011)[1]
Employees	82,464 (2012)[1]
Parent	HCL
Website	www.hcltech.com

HCL Technologies Limited (BSE: 532281, NSE: HCLTECH) is an Indian provider of Information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Noida, India. It is primarily engaged in providing a range of outsourcing services, business process outsourcing and infrastructure services. HCL Technologies is fourth largest IT company in India and is ranked 48 in the global list of IT services providers.

HCL Technologies formed in 1991 when HCL's R&D business was spun off to focus on the growing IT services industry.They have decided to vast their features in Information Technology all over the world. During last 20 years, HCL has expanded its service portfolio in IT applications (custom applications for industry solutions and package implementation), IT infrastructure management, and business process outsourcing, while maintaining and extending in product engineering.

[edit]Services

HCL provides services across the following business lines -

• Engineering and R&D Services (ERS) - offering services in Hardware, Embedded, Mechanical and Software Product Engineering.
• Enterprise Transformation Services (ETS) - offering services in the areas of Independent Verification and Validation, Process Transformation, Data Management, Integration Services, Architecture Services, Disruptive Technology Services, IT Strategy, and Change Management.
• Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) - division of HCL Technologies Limited has delivery offices across India, UK and USA.^[4]
• Enterprise Application Services (EAS) - focuses on areas like in ERP, SCM, CRM, HCM, EPM, BI and Middleware. This group is now part of HCL AXON, subsidiary of HCL Technologies, formed after HCL Tech acquired Axon Group plc for £440m cash offer in 2008.^[5]
• IT Infrastructure Management Services (ISD) - Well known as HCL Comnet Systems and Services is subdivion of HCL Technologies formed in 1999 offering services such as End User Computing, Datacenter Transformation, Network Services, Information Security Services, Integrated Operations Management, Cross functional services, Mainframe and AS/400 and System Integration.ISD is considred to be a fastest growing line of business. .^[6]

[edit]Acquisitions and Joint Ventures

The company acquired Capitalstream, a US BFSI product company for US$40 million in February 2008.^[7] Capitalstream's FinanceCenter product is an addition to HCL's current product addressing the BFSI market - Penstock, the product that HCL launched in 2007.^[8]

On 15 December 2008, HCLT acquired the UK based AXON Group for US$658 million, which was renamed HCL Axon.

[edit]

Apple Inc.

Apple Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: AAPL NASDAQ-100 component S&P 500 component
Industry	Computer hardware Computer software Consumer electronics Digital distribution
Founded	April 1, 1976 (incorporatedJanuary 3, 1977 as Apple Computer, Inc.)
Founder(s)	Steve Jobs Steve Wozniak Ronald Wayne[1]
Headquarters	Apple Campus, 1 Infinite Loop,Cupertino, California, U.S.
Number of locations	364 retail stores(as of October 2011)
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Tim Cook (CEO) Arthur D. Levinson(Chairman)[2] Sir Jonathan Ive (SVP ofIndustrial Design) Steve Jobs (Chairman, 1976-1985, 2011; CEO, 1997–2011)
Products	Products list[show]
Services	Services list[show]
Revenue	US$ 108.249 billion (2011)[3]
Operating income	US$ 33.790 billion (2011)[3]
Net income	US$ 25.922 billion (2011)[3]
Total assets	US$ 116.371 billion (2011)[3]
Total equity	US$ 76.615 billion (2011)[3]
Employees	60,400 (2011)[4]
Subsidiaries	Braeburn Capital, FileMaker Inc., Anobit
Website	Apple.com

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL; formerly Apple Computer, Inc.) is an American multinational corporation that designs and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products are the Macintosh line of computers, theiPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Its software includes the Mac OS X operating system; the iTunes media browser; the iLife suite of multimedia and creativity software; the iWork suite of productivity software; Aperture, a professional photography package; Final Cut Studio, a suite of professional audio and film-industry software products; Logic Studio, a suite of music production tools; the Safari web browser; and iOS, a mobile operating system.

As of July 2011, Apple has 364 retail stores in thirteen countries,^[5] and an online store.^[6] It is the largest publicly traded company in the world by market capitalization, ^[7] [8] as well as the largest technology company in the world by revenue and profit, more than Google and Microsoftcombined.^[9][10] As of September 24, 2011, the company had 60,400 permanent full-time employees and 2,900 temporary full-time employees worldwide;^[4] its worldwide annual revenue in 2010 totalled $65 billion, growing to $108 billion in 2011.^[3]

Fortune magazine named Apple the most admired company in the United States in 2008, and in the world from 2008 to 2012.^{[11][12][13][14][15]}However, the company has received widespread criticism for its contractors' labor, and for its environmental and business practices.^[16][17]

Established on April 1, 1976 in Cupertino, California, and incorporated January 3, 1977,^[18] the company was named Apple Computer, Inc. for its first 30 years. The word "Computer" was removed from its name on January 9, 2007,^[19] as its traditional focus on personal computers shifted towardsconsumer electronics.^[20]

Oracle 

Oracle Corporation

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: ORCL NASDAQ-100 Component S&P 500 Component
Industry	Enterprise software Computer hardware
Founded	Santa Clara, California, USA (June 16, 1977)[1]
Founder(s)	Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, Ed Oates
Headquarters	500 Oracle Parkway,Redwood Shores, Redwood City, California, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Larry Ellison (CEO) Jeffrey Henley (Chairman) Safra Catz (President) Mark Hurd (President)
Products	Oracle Applications, Oracle Database, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Fusion Middleware, servers,workstations, storage
Revenue	US$ 37.1 billion (2012)[2]
Operating income	US$ 13.7 billion (2012)[2]
Net income	US$ 10.0 billion (2012)[2]
Total assets	US$ 78.3 billion (2012)[2]
Total equity	US$ 44.1 billion (2012)[2]
Employees	115,166 (Q4 FY12)[2]
Subsidiaries	List of Oracle subsidiaries
Website	www.oracle.com

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketingcomputer hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems. Headquartered at 500 Oracle Parkway,Redwood Shores, Redwood City, California, United States and employing approximately 113,644 people worldwide as of 30 June 2012,^[3] it has enlarged its share of the software market through organic growth and through a number of high-profile acquisitions. By 2007 Oracle had the third-largest software revenue, after Microsoft and IBM.^[4]

The company also builds tools for database development and systems of middle-tier software, enterprise resource planning software (ERP), customer relationship management software (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) software.

Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle Corporation, has served as Oracle's CEO throughout its history. He also served as the Chairman of the Boarduntil his replacement by Jeffrey O. Henley in 2004. On August 22, 2008 the Associated Press ranked Ellison as the top-paid chief executive in the world.^[5][6]

Ellison took inspiration^[7] from the 1970 paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database management systems (RDBMS) named "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks."^[8] He heard about the IBM System R database from an article in the IBM Research Journal provided by Ed Oates (a future co-founder of Oracle Corporation). System R also derived from Codd's theories, and Ellison wanted to make Oracle's product compatible with System R, but IBM stopped this by keeping the error codes for their DBMS secret. Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 with Bob Minerand Ed Oates under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL). In 1979 SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc. (RSI).^[9] In 1982, RSI renamed itself Oracle Systems^[10] to align itself more closely with its flagship product Oracle Database. At this stage Bob Miner served as the company's senior programmer. In 1995, Oracle Systems Corporation changed its name to Oracle Corporation.^[11]

Part of Oracle Corporation's early success arose from using the C programming language to implement its products. This eased porting to differentoperating systems (most of which support C). This gave Oracle Corporation an advantage over companies using operating-system-specific languages.^{[citation needed]} Oracle Corporation programmers wrote the first C compiler for the IBM mainframe platform in order to port to that platform.^{[citation needed].}

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Infosys

Infosys Limited

Type	Public
Traded as	BSE: 500209 NSE: INFY NASDAQ: INFY BSE SENSEX Constituent
Industry	IT services, IT consulting
Founder(s)	N. R. Narayana Murthy Nandan Nilekani N. S. Raghavan S. Gopalakrishnan S. D. Shibulal K Dinesh Ashok Arora
Headquarters	Bangalore, India
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	K. V. Kamath (Chairman) S. Gopalakrishnan (Co-Chairman) S.D. Shibulal (CEO & MD)
Services	IT, business consulting andoutsourcing services
Revenue	US$ 6.99 billion (2012)[1]
Operating income	US$ 2.01 billion (2012)[1]
Profit	US$ 1.71 billion (2012)[1]
Total assets	US$ 7.53 billion (2012)[1]
Total equity	US$ 6.57 billion (2012)[1]
Employees	151,151 (2012)[1]
Divisions	Infosys BPO, Infosys China
Website	www.infosys.com

Infosys Limited formerly Infosys Technologies Limited (BSE: 500209, NSE: INFY, NASDAQ: INFY) is an Indian provider of business consulting, technology, engineering and outsourcing services. Its headquartered in Bangalore, India. It has offices in 30 countries and development centers in India, US, China, Australia, UK, Canada, Japan and many other countries.

Infosys was co-founded in 1981 by N. R. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, 

N. S. Raghavan, S. Gopalakrishnan, S. D. Shibulal, K Dinesh & Ashok Arora after

 they resigned from Patni Computer Systems. Today, Infosys is 

a global leader in the "next generation" of IT and consulting with

 revenues of 7billion (FY12).

Infosys ranked among the most innovative companies in a Forbes survey ^[2],

 leading technology companies in a report by The Boston Consulting Group ^[3]

 and top ten green companies in Newsweek's Green Rankings

.Infosys was voted India's most admired company in The Wall Street

Infosys Labs

Infosys developed a corporate Research and Development wing

 called Infosys Labs. Consisting of a dedicated research and

 innovation facility, Infosys Labs builds on the successes of the

 award-winning Software Engineering and Technology Labs (SETLabs),

 and envisages a broader mandate. The 600-member technology and

 domain-focused team focuses on driving innovation across trends

 identified by the company to transform the businesses of clients 

globally.^[14]

[edit]Charity

In October 2009, the northern districts of Karnataka were severely affected by floods after torrential rainfall. It claimed hundreds of lives and rendered millions of villagers homeless.

The employees of Infosys joined hands to rebuild villages and undertake a mass housing project. Infoscions, together with the Board of Directors and the Infosys Foundation, contributed US$ 6.8 million towards relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction.

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Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: ADBE NASDAQ-100 Component S&P 500 Component
Industry	Computer software
Founded	Mountain View, California, U.S. (1982)
Founder(s)	Charles Geschke John Warnock , Steebanraj Charles
Headquarters	Adobe Systems complex, San Jose, California, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Charles Geschke (Co-Chairman) John Warnock (Co-Chairman) Shantanu Narayen (President & CEO)
Products	List of Adobe products
Revenue	US$ 4.21 billion (2011)[1]
Operating income	US$ 1.19 billion (2011)[1]
Net income	US$ 832.85 million (2011)[1]
Total assets	US$ 8.99 billion (2011)[1]
Total equity	US$ 5.78 billion (2011)[1]
Employees	9,925 (December 2, 2011)[1]
Website	Adobe.com

Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ: ADBE) ( /əˈdoʊbiː/ ə-doh-bee) is an American multinational computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States. The company has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray towards rich Internet application software development.

Adobe was founded in December 1982^[2] by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC in order to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. In 1985, Apple Computer licensed PostScript for use in its LaserWriter printers, which helped spark the desktop publishing revolution. The company name Adobe comes from Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California, which ran behind the houses of both of the company's founders.^[2] Adobe acquired its former competitor, Macromedia, in December 2005, which added newer software products and platforms such as ColdFusion, Dreamweaver, Flash and Flex to its product portfolio.

As of 2010, Adobe Systems has 9,117 employees,^[2] about 40% of whom work in San Jose. Adobe also has major development operations inOrlando; Seattle; San Francisco; Lehi, Utah; Minneapolis; Waltham, Massachusetts; and San Luis Obispo, California in the United States; Ottawa, Canada; Hamburg, Germany; Noida and Bangalore, India; Bucharest, Romania; Basel, Switzerland; and Beijing, China.

At PhotoShop World 2011, Adobe unveiled a new mobile photo service.^[26] Carousel is a new application for iPhone, iPad and Mac that uses Photoshop Lightroom technology for users to adjust and fine-tune images on all platforms.^[26] Carousel will also allow users to automatically sync, share and browse photos.^[26] The service was later renamed to "Adobe Revel"^[27].

On November 9, 2011 Adobe announced that they would cease development of Flash for mobile devices following version 11.1. Instead they will be focusing on HTML 5 for mobile devices.^[28]

On December 1, 2011, Adobe announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Efficient Frontier.

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Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Logo used from the 1990s until acquisition byOracle
Former type	Subsidiary
Industry	Computer systems Computer software
Fate	Acquired by Oracle
Successor(s)	Oracle America, Inc.
Founded	1982
Founder(s)	Vinod Khosla Andy Bechtolsheim Bill Joy Scott McNealy
Defunct	January 27, 2010
Headquarters	Santa Clara, California, USA
Products	Servers Workstations Storage Services
Owner(s)	Oracle Corporation
Employees	38,600 (near peak, 2006)[1]
Website	Oracle.com

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982.^[2] At its height, Sun headquarters were in Santa Clara, California (part of Silicon Valley), on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center.

On January 27, 2010, Sun was acquired by Oracle Corporation for US$7.4 billion, based on an agreement signed on April 20, 2009.^[3] The following month, Sun Microsystems, Inc. was merged with Oracle USA, Inc. to become Oracle America, Inc.^[4]

Sun products included computer servers and workstations based on its own SPARC processors as well as AMD's Opteron and Intel's Xeonprocessors; storage systems; and, a suite of software products including the Solaris operating system, developer tools, Web infrastructure software, and identity management applications. Other technologies include the Java platform, MySQL, and NFS. Sun was a proponent of open systems in general and Unix in particular, and a major contributor to open source software.^[5] Sun's main manufacturing facilities were located in Hillsboro, Oregonand Linlithgow, Scotland.

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Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: CSCO,SEHK: 4333 Dow Jones Component S&P 500 Component
Industry	Networking equipment
Founded	San Francisco, California, U.S. (1984)
Founder(s)	Leonard Bosack Sandy Lerner
Headquarters	San Jose, California, U.S.[1]
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	John Chambers (Chairman & CEO)
Products	Networking Device Network Management Cisco IOS and NX-OS Software Interface and Module Optical networking Storage area networks Wireless, Telepresence, VOIP, Security Datacenter List of Cisco Products
Revenue	US$ 43.2 billion (2011)[2]
Operating income	US$ 7.67 billion (2011)[3]
Net income	US$ 6.49 billion (2011)[3]
Total assets	US$ 87.09 billion (2011)[3]
Total equity	US$ 47.25 billion (2011)[3]
Employees	71,825 (2012)[4]
Subsidiaries	List of acquisitions
Website	Cisco.com

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States,^[5] that designs, manufactures, and sells networking equipment. The stock was added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average on June 8, 2009, and is also included in the S&P 500 Index, the Russell 1000 Index, NASDAQ 100 Index and the Russell 1000 Growth Stock Index.^[6]

History

One of the many buildings on the Cisco Systems campus in San Jose

[edit]1984–1995: early years

Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined by Erich Drafahl, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner briefly moved on to direct computer services at Schlumberger, but returned full time to Cisco in 1987.^{[citation needed]} The name "Cisco" was derived from the city name, San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on using the lower case "cisco" in the early days. For Cisco's first product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally written some years before by William Yeager, another Stanford employee who later joined Sun Microsystems. The company's first CEO was Bill Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988.^[7] In 1988, John Morgridge was appointed CEO.

On February 16, 1990, Cisco Systems went public (with a market capitalization of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. On August 28, 1990, Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, her husband Bosack resigned in protest. The couple walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was committed to their own charity.^[8]

Although Cisco was not the first company to develop and sell dedicated network nodes,^[9] it was one of the first to sell commercially successful routers supporting multiple network protocols.^[10] Classical, CPU-based architecture of early Cisco devices coupled with flexibility of operating system IOSallowed for keeping up with evolving technology needs by means of frequent software upgrades. Some popular models of that time (such as Cisco 2500) managed to stay in production for almost a decade virtually unchanged - a rare sight in high-tech industry. Although Cisco was strongly rooted in the enterprise environment, the company was quick to capture the emerging service provider environment, entering SP market with new, high-capacity product lines such as Cisco 7000 and Cisco 7500.

Between 1992 and 1994, Cisco also acquired several companies in Ethernet switching, most notably Kalpana, Grand Junction and Crescendo Communications which together formed the Catalyst business unit. At the time, the company envisioned layer 3 routing and layer 2 (Ethernet, Token Ring) switching as complementary functions of different intelligence and architecture – the former was slow and complex, the latter was fast but simple. This philosophy dominated the company's product lines throughout 1990s.

In 1995, John Morgridge was succeeded by John Chambers.

[edit]1996–2005: Internet and silicon intelligence

The phenomenal growth of the Internet in mid - to late 1990s quickly changed the telecom landscape. As the Internet Protocol (IP) became widely adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Nevertheless, Cisco managed to catch the Internet wave, with products ranging from modem access shelves (AS5200) to core GSR routers that quickly became vital to Internet service providers and by 1998 gave Cisco de-facto monopoly in this critical segment.

In late March 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Cisco became the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of more than US$500 billion.^[11][12] In November 2011, with a market cap of about US$94 billion,^[13] it is still one of the most valuable companies.^[14]

Meanwhile, the growth of Internet bandwidth requirements kept challenging traditional, software-based packet processing architectures.

The perceived complexity of programming routing functions in silicon, led to formation of several startups determined to find new ways to process IP and MPLS packets entirely in hardware and blur boundaries between routing and switching. One of them, Juniper Networks, shipped their first product in 1999 and by 2000 chipped away about 30% from Cisco SP Market share. Cisco answered the challenge with homegrown ASICs and fast processing cards for GSR routers and Catalyst 6500 switches. In 2004, Cisco also started migration to new high-end hardware CRS-1 and software architecture IOS-XR.

[edit]

Throughout mid-2000s Cisco also built a significant presence in India. establishing its Globalization Centre East in Bangalore for $1 billion planning that 20% of Cisco's leaders would be based there.^[16]

However Cisco continued to be challenged by both domestic Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Networks and overseas competitors Huawei. Cisco products, most notably IP phones and Telepresence, are frequently sighted in movies and TV series.^[20] The company itself and its history was featured in the documentary film Something Ventured which premiered in 2011.

Cisco acquired a variety of companies to spin products and talent into the company. In 1995–1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions.[24] Several acquisitions, such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred. During the Internet boom in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation, a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, for about US$7 billion. It was the most expensive acquisition made by Cisco to date, and only the acquisition of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies have grown into $1Bn+ business units for Cisco, including LAN switching, Enterprise Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) platform Webex, and home networking. The latter came as result of Cisco acquiring Linksys in 2003 and in 2010 was supplemented with new product line dubbed Cisco Valet. Cisco announced on March 15, 2012 that it is acquiring NDS Group for a $5B.[25] This transaction is expected to complete in 4–6 months.

In the recent merger deals, Cisco bought Starent Networks (a mobile technology company) and Moto Development Group, a product design consulting firm that helped develop Cisco's Flip video camera.[26] Also in 2010, Cisco became a key stakeholder in e-Skills Week. In March 2011, Cisco completed the acquisition of privately held network configuration and change management solutions company Pari Networks.[27]

Although many buy-ins (such as Crescendo Networks in 1993, Tandberg in 2010) resulted in acquisition of flagship technology to Cisco, many others have failed – partially or completely. For instance, in 2010 Cisco occupied a meaningful share of the packet-optical market,[28] revenues were still not on par with US$7 billion price tag paid in 1999 for Cerent. Some of acquired technologies (such as Flip from Pure Digital) saw their product lines terminated.[29]
[edit]Products and services

Cisco's current portfolio of products and services is focused upon three market segments – Enterprise and Service Provider, Small Business and the Home. The solutions for each market are segmented into Architectures, which form the basis for how Cisco approaches each market.
Corporate market: Enterprise networking and Service Providers
Borderless networks: for their range of routers, switches, wireless systems, security systems, WAN acceleration, energy and building management systems and media aware networks.[30]
Collaboration: IP video and phones, TelePresence, HealthPresence, Unified Communications, Call Center systems, Enterprise social networks and Mobile applications[31]
Datacenter and Virtualization: Unified Computing, Unified Fabric, Data Centre Switching, Storage Networking and Cloud services.[32]
IP NGN (Next Generation Networks): High-end routing and switching for fixed and mobile service provider networks, broadcast video contribution/distribution, entitlement and content delivery systems.[33]
Small businesses[34]
Routers and switches (including those for networks of smart meters)[35]
Security and surveillance: IP cameras, data and network security solutions, etc.[36]
Voice and conferencing solutions: VOIP phones and gateway-systems, WebEx, video conferencing
Wireless: WiFi Access points
Network storage systems
Home user[37]
Linksys product line of access points, switches, etc.
Broadband: cable modems

With the acquisition of Pure Digital Technologies, Cisco began to sell a line of video recording devices called "Flip Video" that had been Pure Digital's only line of products. This line of products was not as popular as Cisco had thought it would have been, and on April 12, 2011, Cisco announced they were discontinuing all Flip camera production.[38][39] Cisco ūmi product line – video conferencing for home also proved to be a short-lived bid for consumer multimedia market and did survive in Cisco product lineup.

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Dell

Dell Inc.

The Dell logo; the circle was added in late 2010.
Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: DELL SEHK: 4331 NASDAQ-100 Component S&P 500 Component
Industry	Computer hardware, Computer software, IT consulting, IT services
Founded	Austin, Texas, U.S. (November 4, 1984)
Founder(s)	Michael Dell
Headquarters	1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States[1]
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Michael Dell (Chairman & CEO)
Products	Desktops, netbooks,notebooks, peripherals,servers, printers, scanners,smartphones, storages, televisions
Revenue	US$ 63.07 billion (2012)[2]
Operating income	US$ 4.43 billion (2012)[2]
Net income	US$ 3.49 billion (2012)[2]
Total assets	US$ 44.53 billion (2012)[2]
Total equity	US$ 8.91 billion (2012)[2]
Employees	110,000 (2012)[2]
Subsidiaries	Alienware, Dell Services,Force10, SonicWall, WYSE,SecureWorks, KACE Networks, Exanet, Compellent,AppAssure Software, Quest Software
Website	Dell.com

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) is an American multinational computer technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest technological corporations in the world, employing more than 103,300 people worldwide.^[2] Dell is listed at number 41 in the Fortune 500list.^[3] It is the third largest PC vendor in the world after HP and Lenovo.^[4]

Dell has grown by both increasing its customer base and through acquisitions since its inception; notable mergers and acquisitions includingAlienware (2006) and Perot Systems (2009). As of 2009, the company sold personal computers, servers, data storage devices, network switches,software, and computer peripherals. Dell also sells HDTVs, cameras, printers, MP3 players and other electronics built by other manufacturers. The company is well known for its innovations in supply chain management and electronic commerce.

Fortune Magazine listed Dell as the sixth largest company in Texas by total revenue.^[5] It is the second largest non-oil company in Texas – behindAT&T – and the largest company in the Austin, Texas area.^[6]

Dell's headquarters is located in Round Rock, Texas.^[32] As of 2010 the company employs about 16,000 people in the facility,^[33] which has 2,100,000 square feet (200,000 m²) of space.^[34] As of 1999 almost half of the general fund of the City of Round Rock originates from sales taxes generated from the Dell headquarters.^[35]

The US and India are the only countries which have all of Dell's business functions and provide support globally: Research and Development, manufacturing, finance, analysis, customer care.

From its early beginnings, Dell operated as a pioneer in the "configure to order" approach to manufacturing—delivering individual PCs configured to customer specifications. In contrast, most PC manufacturers in those times delivered large orders to intermediaries on a quarterly basis.^[57]

To minimize the delay between purchase and delivery, Dell has a general policy of manufacturing its products close to its customers. This also allows for implementing a just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing approach, which minimizes inventory costs. Low inventory is another signature of the Dell business model—a critical consideration in an industry where components depreciate very rapidly.^[58]

Dell's manufacturing process covers assembly, software installation, functional testing (including "burn-in"), and quality control. Throughout most of the company's history, Dell manufactured desktop machines in-house and contracted out manufacturing of base notebooks for configuration in-house.^[59] However, the company's approach has changed. The 2006 Annual Report states "we are continuing to expand our use of original design manufacturing partnerships and manufacturing outsourcing relationships." The Wall Street Journal reported in September, 2008 that "Dell has approached contract computer manufacturers with offers to sell" their plants.^[60]

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