iText Software

Itext Software Corp offers tools for PDF creation, editing and struggling with incompatible file formats.

Text was born on the world wide web. The first versions of the iText software, released between 2000 and 2008, could be downloaded and used for free within the boundaries defined in the MPL/LGPL open source license. This was an innovative business approach, generating revenue from Google AdSense advertisements on one hand, and royalties for the best-selling book 'iText in Action' (2006), published by Manning on the other hand. In 2007, it became clear that this revenue wasn't sufficient to ensure further development and support of the software. The first iText company was founded in 2008, 1T3XT BVBA, incorporated in Ghent, Belgium. All the IP of the software was transferred to this company, and in 2009, the license of the library was changed to the AGPL. Since that change, buying a commercial license is mandatory as soon as you develop activities involving the iText software without disclosing the source code of your own applications. At that time, this approach was more successful in the US than elsewhere in the world, hence the birth of a second iText company: iText Software Corp (ISC). ISC was initially responsible for the worldwide sales of commercial licenses. The company was incorporated in California (Bay area), but has opened an office in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2013. The third iText company, iText Software BVBA (ISB) was founded in 2011. ISB is based in Ghent, Belgium, and took over sales in Europe, Africa, Asia en Oceania. Our product is a technical component used by many other IT companies to enhance their products and projects with PDF functionality. A large part of our customers are technology vendors such as Oracle, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Symantec, but also integrators such as CSC, Cap Gemini, CGI, Atos, Northrop Grumman. If we look at the different sectors that are interested in iText, we see that the financial sector is #1 (Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Charles Schwab), followed by the public sector (IRS, US Navy, the Belgian ministry of Justice) and the Healthcare sector (GlaxoSmithKline, Boehringer Ingelheim, Roche Diagnostics). We also have many Fortune 500 companies as our customer (Coca Cola, Walt Disney, Nike, Sears, Ford). In 2013, we were nominated by Deloitte as one of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the Benelux. We were ranked 10th in the Benelux and obtained the 3rd place in Belgium. Deloitte ranked us on the 53rd place in the EMEA region. In December 2013, 1T3XT BVBA was reorganized and upgraded to iText Group NV with a board of directors consisting of an international selection of entrepreneurs.