Gft history

One of the post graduate students of the University, who was also a physical education coach, Fernando Guimarães, made his monograph about the insertion of Jiu Jitsu into the University curriculum in 1978.

GFT was founded on 19 March in 1987 in St Georgen, Black Forest.

Following three years of growth as a technology consultancy, GFT launched its first product – GRIT – in 1990, which offered a pioneering object-oriented development environment for graphical user interfaces.

Howard, Robert, "The Designer Organization: Italy's GFT Goes Global," in the Harvard Business Review (Massachusetts) September/October 1991.

Bannon, Lisa, "Apparel Maker for Top Labels to Sell Big Stake," in the Wall Street Journal (New York), 6 April 1993.

Ironically, another scandal somewhat tarnished GFT's struggling image in 1995, this time involving a number of its parent company Gemina's top executives.

In 1997 Gemina announced it would divide its industrial, apparel, and publishing businesses.

In 1999, as the world feared the looming millennium bug and a technological meltdown, GFT became listed on the German stock exchange.

In 2001 new offices were opened in the UK and Spain.

How come de la Riva was repping UGF at the 2002 Mundials, rather than Carlson? Although there is of course the Pinduka link.

And after winning a major financial services contract in Brazil in 2003, a development centre was opened near São Paulo.

With the passing of the instrumental Pedro Gama Filho in 2004, the team lost the sponsorship of the University having to move their Head Quarters from the famous Campus Piedade to Bairro do Méier, though keeping the Gama Filho name.

In 2007, however, due to some of their competitors having transitioned to Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), UGF had to change their name since the University did not want to be in any way connected with the sport of MMA, thus giving birth to the name Grappling Fight Team (GF Team).

As GFT gained more international recognition, headquarters were moved to Stuttgart in 2008.

Detaching from its Software division (GFT inboxx GmbH) in 2010, GFT underlined its strategic group alignment towards IT services and IT staffing.

Main Achievements: 4x Brazilian Teams Champion, Rio Open Team Champion (2011), State Champion (Rio)

In 2015, the acquisition of Adesis in Spain was completed, which added 273 more IT experts in Spain and Mexico.

Since its first day Ulrich Dietz has headed GFT, most recently as CEO. Since June 2017, he is Chairman of the company's Administrative Board .