Corporate History - Isogen

Isogen International is the leading XML systems and training company in the world.

It has completed hundreds of XML projects and trained thousands of XML professionals. Its reputation among standards bodies, content management software vendors and content professionals is unmatched.

The firm's offering includes systems integration, information analysis, design and modeling, consulting, tools selection, process improvement, custom application development, and all levels of XML training and education.

Talks begin with Innodata, a leading provider of content services. Innodata recognizes that this acquisition will bring additional capabilities in standards-based content management and publishing technologies, as well as business process improvement and workflow re-engineering.

A broader market discovers the value of open, public and non-proprietary markup languages that make content interchangeable among applications, application types and vendors.

Markup based on SGML - that is, HTML - is employed widely on the Web. But very quickly, it is apparent that higher order functions (task support, product support, customer support, distance learning) are beyond HTML's capability.

XML, the web profile of SGML, is developed by the Word Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Within the W3C XML working group, Isogen helps define XML 1.0.

Within other W3C working groups, Isogen exerts a leadership role (and it continues to do so today).

At the same time, the firm helps its burgeoning portfolio of distinguished clients upgrade their information management and publishing systems, enabling them to employ XML and other structured information standards.

Increasing demand for its expertise and experience - and a growing respect for its frank style, vendor neutrality and independence - help Isogen win early recognition among companies evaluating SGML-based content and document solutions.

What's more, the firm developed an unrivalled reputation for delivering specified economic and process improvements on time and within budget. The resulting high client satisfaction fueled growth.

In fact, the firm's clients included some of the era's largest, most successful manufacturers of telecommunication equipment, semiconductors, aircraft and defense products, as well as leading telecommunication carriers, large commercial publishers and government agencies - each one, a company with sizeable documentation requirements and burdensome outlays.

Pioneers in the movement to standardize the structuring of information through open markup formats, a group of liked-minded technologists, business process analysts and information scientists launch what would become Isogen International.

The firm, based in Dallas, dedicated itself to streamlining and improving document and information management processes. Staffers frankly advocate open content-encoding standards (such as Standard Generalized Markup Language) solutions that liberated clients from the gross technological and economic instability of proprietary solutions.

The latent resources the firm recovered for clients represented a huge economic opportunity. Isogen begins to gain traction.