Our History

• YUDU celebrates its 20 year history
  
  
• After a busy few years, YUDU recognises another impressive milestone as we move past the development of 1500 apps dedicated to digital publishing

• As both Publisher and Sentinel continue rapid growth, a decision is made to create separate stand-alone divisions in the business for both platforms.
  • David Regan is announced as the Divisional Manager for the new Publishing Technology division, responsible for bringing greater focus to the core publishing technology solutions across both web and apps.
  • Charlie Stephenson is announced as Divisional Manager for Sentinel, tasked with leading a focused management team responsible for driving continued growth.
    
    
• Our development team celebrates another impressive achievement as we pass the milestone of building and releasing 1,500 mobile applications.

• YUDU partners with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to support their mission guiding the younger generation to build back better, inspire social mobilisation, and ultimately put the planet back on a more environmentally sustainable course. We play our part, allowing UNEP to go digital with the release of their GEO-6 Youth Report, going paperless to prevent the destruction of trees and the wastage of paper that would occur if the report were printed.

• In pursuit of improving the accessibility of digitally published content, we continue to make significant enhancements to our PhoneView technology. These focus on dramatically reduceing the barriers for readers with visual and motor impairments, that include:
  
  • Enhancing compatibility with screen reader technologies to improve the experience for visually impaired users consuming content via accessibility screen readers
  • Supporting keyboard shortcuts that allow navigation without the need for a mouse or trackpad
  • A bureau service that helps Publishers create WCAG-compliant accessible content
  • Improved self-publishing tools for viewing and editing PhoneView content

• YUDU is awarded ISO 27001 : 2013 accreditation - the international standard for information security. It recognises our commitment to best practices for managing whole company security procedures and risk reduction on an ongoing basis.
  
  
• Winners at the Direct Commerce Awards 2019 in the Industrial, Technology, and Warehouse Supplies Brand Category.
  
  
• Finalists for Digital & Marketing Business of the Year in the BiBAs Awards, renowned as Lancashire's Premier Business Awards.

• YUDU Sentinel is launched, extending on the new creative capabilities of our award-winning cloud-based SAAS platform, it enables organisations to become more resilient when facing critical incidents such as cyber-attacks, power outages, extreme weather events, fires and any other threat to business as normal.
  
  
• YUDU announces the release of YUDU Express - the next generation in high-quality instant cross-device publishing. The platform replaces YUDU Plus, offering an affordable self-service option for digital publishing. YUDU Express incorporates the latest HTML-5 technology, completely replacing Adobe Flash, which is beginning to be phased out across the web.

• With smartphones now the dominant device to consume content online, a new feature known as PhoneView is created. Combining responsive HTML and CSS, PhoneView allows publishers to deliver digital content optimised for smartphones that sits alongside the standard page-turning 'publication view. PhoneView is packed with features to improve content accessibility for readers:
  • Device detection ensures users on smartphones are automatically served the PhoneView edition which is optimised for the best reading experience
  • Users can easily adjust text size to increase or decrease the font for a reading experience tailored to their needs
  • Click-to-navigate functionality enhances ease of movement through PhoneView content
    
    
• Following the launch of our Native Windows applications in 2015, we continued the transition with the launch of our Native Android app solution and began the process of migrating our back catalogue of AIR-Android apps over to the superior Native Android platform.
  
  
• We are named 'Best SaaS Publishing Platform' and 'Best Creative Services Team' in the 2016 Technology Innovator Awards - designed to recognise the very best from across the industry.

• YUDU begins launching Native Windows applications. This is a marked evolution in allowing our publishers to share their digital publications with readers across any Windows device, including the now defunct Windows Mobile, and offered superior performance and cross-platform support for HTML content within our digital publications.

• YUDU announces the launch of BookSnacking, a brand-new browser-based feature allowing publishers to distribute excerpts and samples of their books with a buy button anywhere online.

• YUDU announces the release of YUDU Publisher, a complete overhaul and re-release of YUDU Pro. The platform brings a fresh new interface with major enhancements to the back-end technology, including:
  
  • New drag and drop features
  • Creative tools for sharper animations, videos and slides
  • Improvements to content organisation and management of subscriptions, editions and published content.
  • Timing improvements on every page to allow publishers to process, preview and publish content faster
  • A server separation between the publishing process and the final product, ensuring live materials cannot be affected by data center issues

• Following in the footsteps of YUDU’s highly popular iPad app, we launch a cross-platform app solution for Android, Windows, Mac and iOS built around the Adobe AIR framework.
  
  
• YUDU announces the launch of YUDU Education, the first digital textbook publishing platform that enables educational publishers to seamlessly digitise, optimise and deliver multimedia textbooks for access on tablet, laptop and desktop devices.
  
  The platform puts publishers in control of their own content without having to build their own high-end digital publishing platform. And, unlike other digital textbook platforms, YUDU allows publishers to maintain a direct relationship with the customer.

• YUDU SmartCAT® launches, a brand new online catalogue management system allowing retailers the fastest and most accurate way of keeping catalogues up to date. The solution links product codes, descriptions and prices in real-time to ensure eCommerce websites and online catalogues are fully integrated and display the same data at all times.
  
  The solution also allows catalogue marketers a variety of simplified product ordering options for encourage conversion:
  • Consumers are sent direct to the equivalent product on the eCommerce website when clicking on product codes or images in the digital catalogue
  • A digital order form can be completed by the customer and immediately emailed to the retailer upon submission.
  • An in-catalogue shopping cart that fully integrates with the retailers eCommerce website at checkout stage.

• YUDU is ranked number 35 in the 2010 Deloitte Technology Fast 50, a ranking of the 50 fastest-growing technology companies in the UK. Rankings are based on percentage revenue growth over five years. YUDU grew 868 percent during this period, making it the third fastest-growing company in the North.
  
  
• YUDU unveils the first-ever iPad subscriptions solution, giving publishers the option of selling digital content packages of titles over 1, 3, 6 and 12 months within their iPad apps. An enormous breakthrough in mobile publishing that makes iPad sales a viable revenue growth strategy'.

• YUDU Media wins 'Supplier of the Year' at the Revolution Awards

• This year saw the company transition to the name you know us by today, YUDU. Its inspiration comes from unrelated beginnings, first discovered when Richard was reading about Mao and the Long March that began at Yudu Mountain.
  
  It sparked an idea, until this point digital publishing technologies required companies to send their files over for transformation into digital editions by the provider. Ours was the first platform to empower companies and individuals with the tools to self-publish. Essentially, you do it, YUDU it...and the name is born. 
  
  Now all we needed to do was go out and get it. This involved two expensive bottles of wine and a good dinner in Philidelphia with the then-owner, for Richard to acquire the trading name of YUDU.
  
  From here, following 12 months of rigorous testing and development, YUDU.com was launched alongside our first digital publishing platform known as YUDU Pro. The platform was an instant success, with the technology and ease of use miles ahead of any platform currently available.

• Richard privately funds the development of a new breed of cloud-based digital publishing platform. Tom Stone, who is still our current Technical Director, leads the development and testing of YUDU's first digital publishing platform. 
  
  One of YUDU's driving principles is improving accessibility, unlocking digital content for audiences who have not previously been able to access it. 
  
  At this point, the digital publishing industry was run on Adobe Flash, a form of content that was inaccessible to readers with visual impairments. So, in developing our first iteration of YUDU reader software, we entered into consultation with the Royal National Institute for Blind People (RNIB) to set about tackling this barrier.
  
  Through innovation, we developed a brand-new technology to extract content from Flash publications and convert it into an accessible plain-text version that sits alongside every publication. A version that can integrate with screen reader technology to bring these publications to readers with visual impairments.
  
  This was the first and most important of many innovations to would help YUDU become a driving force for accessibility standards in the digital publishing industry.

 

• After promising growth in the opening year, it became clear to Richard (our CEO) that we needed to build our own digital publishing platform to deliver the level of service were aspiring to. As the existing third-party software lacked the required capabilities and scalability.
  
  Richard builds a mind map of what a market-leading cloud-based SAAS publishing platform should look like, before connecting with a brilliant software house named Softwire. Within 3 months, the mind map is transformed into a diagram covering the entire wall of Softwire's office.

YUDU begins life in the digital publishing world with the trading name 'Digital Alternatives'. At this stage, we relied on third-party software to power the business.