The story
Founded by Rupert Murdoch in 1989.1
The development of the technology on the basis which the company was founded on, began in 1983, at the Weizmann Institute by Professor Adi Shamir (who had previously developed the RSA encryption algorithm), together with his research students Amos Fiat and Yossi Tulpen. The first application they developed was a digital rights management solution aimed at protecting software from being copied illegally. They then developed a smart card to prevent counterfeits, which were first intended to protect credit card transactions. The patent of the card is registered in the name of Yeda Research & Development Co., the commercial arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science. In those years, media mogul Rupert Murdoch began to develop his television business, which included satellite TV broadcasts for a fee, and a pay-per-view service for movies and sporting events. In order to charge a fee based on viewing, and to maintain his agreements with the film companies and the owners of the sports broadcasting rights, he looked for a way to encrypt the broadcasts. An Australian entrepreneur named Bruce Hundertmark contacted Shamir and the Weizmann Institute and between them and Murdoch's News Corp. corporation. News Corp. was impressed with their "smart card" technology and decided to invest in its development.
The company was established in 1988 as News Datacom (NDC) by Dr. Dov Rubin, Jonathan (Yoni) Hashkes, Michael Dick, and Yishai Sered - and soon joined by Mickey Cohen and Gershon Baron - in partnership with News Corporation and the Weizmann Institute, a university and research institute in Rehovot, Israel. The company was renamed News Datacom Research, and additional investors joined. The company signed a contract with BSkyB, in which News Corp. had a 35% stake, for the development of an encryption system.
In 1992, one year after finalizing its product, the company was acquired by its primary customer, News Corp, for $15 million, and renamed News Digital Systems (NDS). In 1996 NDS merged with Digi-Media Vision (DMV) a video compression company that News had acquired in 1995 which had been the Advanced Products Division [APD] of National Transcommunications Limited [NTL] in the UK. In 1999 the video compression division of NDS was sold to Tandberg Television (now MediaKind) and, separately, the company began trading as a public company on the NASDAQ stock exchange. In 2009, Permira and News Corporation announced a $3.6 billion arrangement for buying the public holding in NDS, turning it into a privately held company.
Acquisitions
In December 2000, NDS acquired Orbis Technology, a British company which develops software for interactive betting, in order to strengthen its application portfolio for Interactive TV.
In March 2008 Orbis Technology acquired Electracade Ltd, a UK-based developer of online interactive games for £2.6 million.
In July 2010, Orbis Technology acquired Alphameric Solutions, a provider of technology to the bookmaking marketplace, from Alphameric PLC for £15.5 million.
In February 2011, Orbis Technology was sold by NDS for £208 million, in a management buyout backed by private equity firm Vitruvian Partners.
In June 2002, NDS acquired Visionik A/S, a Danish company which provides digital interactive broadcast technology.
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In August 2003, NDS acquired all the intellectual property assets of a French interactive TV technology company Interactif Delta Production S.A.
On 16 December 2003, NDS acquired the MediaHighway middleware business from Canal+ Technologies a subsidiary of Thomson SA and licensed certain related patents from Thomson SA for a total consideration of €60 million.
In October 2006, NDS acquired Danish game design company ITE.
On December 4, 2006, NDS acquired Jungo, which provides software for residential gateways, for an aggregate consideration of up to $107.5 million in cash.
On August 7, 2007 NDS acquired CastUp Inc, which provides an end-to-end solution for the acquisition, processing, distributing, serving and monetizing of rich media content over IP, particularly video and audio over the Internet.
On March 15, 2012, Cisco Systems announced its intent to acquire NDS Group. It was later acquired successfully and in 2014 its name was changed into Videoscape, becoming a part of Cisco.
On April 29, 2018, Calcalist reported that Cisco sold its departments related to video and security formerly part of NDS to Permira.
From Wikipedia’s article on Cisco Videoscape, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4