Vo N. Tran
Mr. Tran was born and raised in Saigon, Vietnam. Now he owns a very successful software product and company.
Upon South Vietnam's surrender to communist forces in 1975, Mr. Tran, then 21, managed to get on an American helicopter along with two of his sisters, which took them to a cargo boat off the Vietnam shore. He remembers his escape to be fun and dramatic in hindsight, which included sneaking into an American building and climbing onto the roof before hopping onto the helicopter.
From there, the journey to America landed them at a refugee camp in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. A family in Louisville, KY sponsored Mr. Tran and his sisters, but Mr. Tran shortly left to join a friend who resided in the Washington area. There, he enrolled at American University majoring in Computer Science while doing odd jobs, such as being a dishwasher, a tutor, and a computer operator, to support himself. He eventually obtained his Bachelor of Sciences in 1978 and his Masters of Sciences in 1983 in Computer Science from American University.
Between 1979 and 1986, Mr. Tran worked for General Electric, Systems & Applied Sciences and COMSAT in the capacities of a software engineer and a software manager. Mr. Tran's engineering background includes real-time systems, telecommunications and networking, graphical user interfaces, and Internet-based applications. In 1986, Mr. Tran left COMSAT and founded Quyen Systems, a consulting company that specialized in the development of desktop applications involving graphics and communications. In 1992, the company shut down its consulting business and re-invented itself into a software manufacturer by producing and commercializing netViz, a graphical data-visualization software. Quyen System shipped netViz 1.0 in 1993, the first graphical network documentation tool on the market. netViz received InfoWorld 1995 Product of the Year award and Network Computing Editor's Choice in 1995. Quyen Systems was later renamed netViz Corporation.
netViz Corporation is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, and currently employs 30 people and has experienced consistent growth. netViz Version 4.0 began shipping in March of 1999 and netViz software now has an installed base of approximately 40,000 licenses in 10,000 companies. netViz has private and public-sector customers around the globe, including United Technologies, Motorola, Anderson Consulting, Bell Atlantic, Canon, Federal Express, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM, as well as the State of Maryland, Departments of Commerce and Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, and the United States Army and Navy.