GrapeCity, Inc. is a privately held, multinational software corporation based in

Sendai is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Miyagi Prefecture, the largest city in the Tōhoku region. , the city had a population of 1,091,407 in 525,828 households, and is one of Japan's 20 Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, desig ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, that develops software products and provides outsourced product development services, consulting services, software, and

Customer relationship management Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information. CRM systems compile data from a ra ...

services. GrapeCity also has established WINEstudios, a media design and digital production facility in Japan. GrapeCity's major office locations are in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

and

Albania Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and shares ...

Corporate history

Foundation

GrapeCity, formerly Bunka Orient Corporation, was founded in Miyagi prefecture, Japan in 1980 by Paul Broman. The company was established to provide software solutions for the emerging personal computer market in Japan. Paul Broman worked with Daniel Fanger, now Chairman of GrapeCity and Principal of MeySen Academy, and Nobuo Iwasa to turn Bunka Orient Corporation into a software development company.

Original products

LeySer School Management Software

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

Localization of Developer Tools

The company expanded into a range of other software products and services, beginning by localizing developer tools for the Japanese market, another empty niche they discovered when developing LeySer Services. Beginning in 1993, they grouped these localized tools together and resold them as their Power Tools line. Localized tools included: * PowerTCP Tools (1999) * JClass (2002) and JProbe (2007) Java(TM) Components * LEADTOOLS Imaging Toolkits * FarPoint Spread (1999)

Timeline

Name change

Originally named Bunka Orient Corporation when it was founded in 1980, the company found that its name was often confused with other entities with the same acronym when it expanded into China and India. The company was renamed GrapeCity in 2002. In 2005, when GrapeCity established a media design and digital production facility, they established WINEstudios.

Acquisitions

One of the developer tools that GrapeCity localized for Japanese programmers was

ActiveReports ActiveReports is a .NET reporting tool used by developers of .NET (cross-platform, WinForms), and ASP.NET/JavaScript ( WebForms, MVC 5, Core, Blazor) applications. It was originally developed by Data Dynamics, which was then acquired by Gr ...

from

Data Dynamics GrapeCity, Inc. is a privately held, multinational software corporation based in Sendai, Japan, that develops software products and provides outsourced product development services, consulting services, software, and Customer relationship managem ...

. In addition to localizing the user interface and documentation, GrapeCity performed quality testing for Japanese usage of the product and requested new features. After a long association with the company, in October, 2008, GrapeCity announced their acquisition of Data Dynamics, in Columbus, Ohio. Another of the developer tools that GrapeCity localized was Spread from FarPoint Technologies. In a similar move, after long association with the company, they announced their acquisition of FarPoint Technologies in Morrisville, North Carolina, September, 2009. In 2012, GrapeCity also completed the acquisition of ComponentOne in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

, which includes the developer tools ComponentOne Studio, a .NET tookit for

Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including web site, websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platfor ...

; Wijmo, a set of controls for

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

and HTML5, including

AngularJS AngularJS is a discontinued free and open-source JavaScript-based web framework for developing single-page applications. It was maintained mainly by Google and a community of individuals and corporations. It aimed to simplify both the development ...

and

KnockoutJS Knockout is a standalone JavaScript implementation of the Model–View–ViewModel pattern with templates. The underlying principles are therefore: * a clear separation between domain data, view components and data to be displayed * the presenc ...

; and Xuni, a native mobile control collection for

Xamarin.Forms Xamarin is a Microsoft-owned San Francisco-based software company founded in May 2011 by the engineers that created Mono (software), Mono, Mono (software)#Xamarin.Android, Xamarin.Android (formerly Mono for Android) and Mono (software)#Xamarin.i ...

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

WindowsPhone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design lan ...

, and

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

Divisions

LeySer School Management System

The LeySer

school management system A student information system (SIS), student management system, school administration software or student administration system is a management information system for education sector establishments used to manage student data. It integrates student ...

division of GrapeCity is responsible for all software and services around managing private educational institutions in Japan. Key modules of the system include

accounting Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and non financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. Accounting, which has been called the "languag ...

, payroll, tuition management and asset management. The software started out in 1980 as a set of accounting tools and over the years has evolved from the earliest

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

version to

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, and today it is a set of software based on the

.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...

platform.

Developer Tools

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

and FarPoint, GrapeCity has consolidated its line of developer tools around ComponentOne, FarPoint Spread,

, and Data Dynamics Analysis. These products provide user interface, spreadsheet, reporting, and analysis functionality to software developers using the Microsoft platform and developer tools.

GrapeCity Global Services

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

Business Intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical pr ...

eCommerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managemen ...

, trading systems, information portals, inventory systems, supply chain systems, banking systems, (

customer relationship management Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information. CRM systems compile data from a ra ...

), financial and accounting packages, and

workflow A workflow consists of an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity, enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information. It can be depicted as a sequence of ...

management. The GGS division also provides software services and add-on products for CDC

Pivotal CRM Pivotal CRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) software system offered by Avolin, an enterprise software and service company headquartered in Austin Texas. Pivotal CRM includes software tools for sales force automation (SFA), marketing a ...

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

WINEstudios Digital Media Production and Design

The WINEstudios production and design company established by GrapeCity creates

features Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature (CAD), could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (software design) is an intentional distinguishing characteristic of a software item ...

, programs,

commercials A television advertisement (also called a television commercial, TV commercial, commercial, spot, television spot, TV spot, advert, television advert, TV advert, television ad, TV ad or simply an ad) is a span of television programming produce ...

, music videos, and special presentations. They design computer graphics using CGI applications including

Softimage XSI Autodesk Softimage, or simply Softimage () was a 3D computer graphics application, for producing 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling, and computer animation. Now owned by Autodesk and formerly titled Softimage, XSI, the software has been predomina ...

, Autodesk Maya,

After Effects Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Inc., and used in the post-production process of film making, video games and television production. Among other things, After Eff ...

, Combustion, and Boujou. WINEstudios also designs corporate logos, brochures, and marketing tools. The facility has a sound stage, a

motion capture Motion capture (sometimes referred as mo-cap or mocap, for short) is the process of recording the movement of objects or people. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robo ...

studio, a

chromakey Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a Visual effects, visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on colour hues (colorfulness, chroma range). The technique has b ...

studio, an editing suite, and an audio suite.

GrapeSEED

GrapeSEED Grape seed oil (also called grapeseed oil or grape oil) is a vegetable oil derived from the Seed, seeds of Vitis vinifera, grapes. A by-product of the winemaking industry, it is typically used for edible applications. Uses Cooking Grape se ...

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

ActiveReports Server

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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grapecity Companies established in 1980 Privately held companies of Japan Software companies of Japan Development software companies Outsourcing companies International information technology consulting firms