Random Thoughts
I attended my seventh NI Week in Austin, Texas last week. I remember the first time I made the summer trek to a place of even more heat and humidity than western Ohio. It was 1998 and I was a new editor. I was familiar with National Instruments only through ads and considered them test and measurement and couldn't figure out why Control Engineering sent me down there (I covered discrete control, human-machine interface and geek-level software). I soon found out. NI products are used, and useful, in a myriad of applications spanning automated test to process and discrete control to embedded control.
Major advancements announced during the product unveiling keynote of VP Tim Dehne centered on automation, as he announced company support for the ARC Advisory Group generated category of "Programmable Automation Controller". This category is defined as a step in evolution (sort of a "synthesis" in Hegelian terms for those philosophers among you) from PLCs and PCs. The new products are touted as playing equally well in industrial control and embedded control.
On manager told me that they are spending on research and development as if they are a billion-dollar company, because they intend to be one soon. That wouldn't surprise me.
On another front, I just noticed a news item in today's Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, to wit, "National Semiconductor Corp. agreed to sell its imaging business, which makes chips used in small cameras and cell phones to Eastman Kodak" ... as it "focuses on its main business of making chips." I'm sure there is some sense in there somewhere, but one would hope that management has a little bit clearer picture of what it's doing than the company's PR people do. [They're selling a chip making business in order to focus on making chips...]
6:11:54 AM 
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