Each year offers its own, unique challenges and achievements. 2012 saw Aspose complete its first decade in business, announce a number of ventures, work hard to autoport our Java products, re-design the website and work even closer with user groups. Below is a closer look at some of our achievements this year.
We turned 10!
Aspose started trading in March, 2002 so 2012 saw our tenth anniversary. In the decade since the company was founded, Aspose has seen a lot of changes, and so have our customers. We reconnected with several and spoke to them about why they were early adopters and how their industry has changed in the last 10 years. A strong theme emerged: businesses have moved online and phones and tablets means that users are online too, constantly. We need information instantly and are no longer willing to wait. Delivering the data that users need is an ongoing challenge to programmers in all industries. Aspose tools help by making sure that document delivery and conversion isn’t a problem.
New Products
This year, we’ve launched two new products:
- Aspose.Imaging for Java lets Java programmers work with image files from within their applications. They can open, create, manipulate and convert files, and even save to Adobe PhotoShop format, PSD.
- Aspose.BarCode for SharePoint adds barcodes to SharePoint lists so that users can embed barcodes into documents.
New Ventures
Over the years, Aspose has developed tools that help us work better as a company. We’ve decided to spin some of them out as separate ventures since they can benefit other organisations as well.
- Saaspose takes the idea of our APIs and puts them in the cloud as REST compliant APIs that helps developers create, convert and manipulate Microsoft Office documents, perform OCR, create barcodes and work with emails.
- GroupDocs is an online document management and collaboration solution with apps that help businesses manage online signatures, collaborate through document review and annotation, automate document assembly, convert, share, print and view documents. They also have GroupDocs Viewer and GroupDocs Annotation plugins for a long list of popular content management systems.
Notable Improvements
Last year we autoported Aspose.Words for Java to give our Java users the same features that our .NET users already enjoyed. We’ve continued the process of autoporting our products and this year has seen us single-sourcing Aspose.BarCode, Aspose.Pdf, Aspose.Cells, Aspose.Email and, most recently, Aspose.Slides. Autoporting is great for us because it we save time that developers can use focusing on new features, but it’s also good for our users. Our Java products have taken a step up this year and will stay in sync with our .NET products.
Community Involvement
User groups and conferences are forums where users get together and learn from each other. We’re keen to support communities across the globe and 2012 saw us work more closely with European groups, while continuing our support for groups in the US. If you’ve attended any of the following user groups and conferences, you might have seen our resource CDs, T-shirts and pens, or won a prize:
- Carolina Code Camp
- Central Ohio Java Users Group
- Central Penn .NET User Group
- Charlotte DayofDotNetNuke
- Dev Open Space 2012
- Frankfurt .NET User Group
- Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (MIGANG)
- Houston SharePoint User Group
- Houston Techfest
- Nashville Java Users’ Group
- New England Java Users Group
- New York City Code Camp
- North Dallas .NET Users Group
- NRW Conference
- Philadelphia Area Java Users Group
- San Antonio SharePoint User Group
- SharePoint Connections Amsterdam 2012
- SQLDays
- Tulsa .NET User Group
- Tulsa Techfest
- UKLUG
- vNext_OC & LASLUG
- Win8@Work
- WPC 2012
Awards 2011-2012
Aspose won a number of awards in 2012. We’re proud to be considered experts in our field and to have so many customers investing in us.
- SD Times Top 100 Award in the Components & Frameworks category.
- ComponentSource Top 10 Bestselling Publisher Award 2011-2012.
- ComponentSource Top 10 Bestselling Product Awards 2011-2012 for Aspose.Total for .NET.
- ComponentSource Top 50 Bestselling Product Awards 2011-2012 for Aspose.Words for .NET.
- ComponentSource Top 50 Bestselling Product Awards 2011-2012 for Aspose.Cells for .NET.
- ComponentSource Top 100 Bestselling Product Awards 2011-2012 for Aspose.Total for Java.
- ComponentSource Top 100 Bestselling Product Awards 2011-2012 for Aspose.Words for Java.
Retired Products
This year we’ve only waved goodbye to one of our products: Aspose.Network for .NET. If you were with us last year, you’ll know that our email products changed names from .Network to .Email. Aspose.Network for .NET remained as a free product that collected together a few network programming features. It’s now retired.
Looking Forward to 2013
We’re looking forward to 2013 and have plans for improving our products and the way we work so that we continue to give our customers the very best products and services. We’re always interested in your feedback and there are many ways that you can interact with us:
- If you have questions about our products, contact our sales team.
- If you have an issue, post in the support forums.
- You’ll find news from us here in the blogs, and
- on Facebook and Twitter.
We wish you a successful 2013!
