GrapeCity
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Software services |
| Founded | 1980 |
| Founder | Paul Broman |
| Headquarters | Sendai, Japan |
|
Key people
|
Paul Broman (Honorary Chairman, Founder) Daniel Fanger (Chairman) Naoyuki Baba (President) Joshua Broman (CCO) |
| Products |
Developer Tools School Management System Education Curriculums |
| Services |
Information technology consulting Digital Media Production Services |
| Website | us |
GrapeCity, inc. is a privately held, multinational software corporation based in Sendai, Japan, that develops its own software products and provides outsourced product development services, consulting services, software, and Customer relationship management services. GrapeCity also established WINEstudios, a media design and digital production facility in Japan.
GrapeCity's major office locations are in the United States, Japan, India, China, and Vietnam.
The forerunner of GrapeCity, Bunka Orient Corporation (see Name Change section below), was founded in Miyagi prefecture, Japan. In 1980, when personal computers began coming to market, founder Paul Broman saw in them an opportunity to streamline the operations of the two schools he had also founded. When he looked for software to use, he found that there was none suitable for the Japanese market, and decided to fill the unmet need himself.
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.
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.
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:
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. The name change announcement showed the sun setting on Bunka Orient India and rising on GrapeCity India.
In 2005, when GrapeCity established a media design and digital production facility, they continued in the spirit of the new name with WINEstudios.
One of the developer tools that GrapeCity localized for Japanese programmers was ActiveReports from Data Dynamics. In addition to localizing the user interface and documentation, GrapeCity performed quality testing for Japanese usage of the product and requested new features. After a long association with the company, in October, 2008, GrapeCity announced their acquisition of Data Dynamics, in Columbus, Ohio.
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