NI ReConnect: Copenhagen October 7, 2021
by Carsten Thomsen
After a lengthy COVID pause, it was good to get together for an NI ReConnect event in “Kødtorvet” (The Meat Market) in Copenhagen, organized by C.N. Rood, the distributor for NI Products in Denmark and other countries. Attendance was about 50 individuals, compared to pre-COVID attendance of about 150.
The event featured a good exhibition with C.N. Rood partners and Danish channel partners (previously Alliance members)
Lectures included an introduction by CN Rood, which now has seven persons serving NI customers in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. C.N. Rood has a long history as a distributor of multiple well-known test and measurement brands such as Tektronix.
Jack Bering gave an excellent presentation of the new NI, and how it’s focus on three vertical segments has resulted in a major re-organization of the company. The segments are Transportation, Aerospace and Defense, and Semiconductor. Although there has been some turbulence during this on-going process, the financials of NI have remained solid.
The re-organization has required a significant shift of resources, both from a development and sales standpoint to support a deep, customer-driven input to meet the needs of these segments.
This was the first time that Danish customers were physically presented with the new structure and also had the opportunity to meet face-to-face with their new sales and support staff. Although it is a new group of contacts after the closure of NI direct sales offices, it was good to see that the were competent ex-NI employees. The ReConnect event was also a sort of “re-union” with former Danish NI sales and support staff, who are now employed by channel partners of major Danish companies.
A side effect of NI focusing on the three vertical markets that was discussed both in the sessions and coffee breaks was: what is the impact on the classic “LabVIEW/DAQ” products. From the presentations of the relatively few new products, it was clear that classic DAQ and LabVIEW appear to be moved into “cash-cow” mode and resources now specifically target new products in areas such as software-defined radios, semiconductor test, and enterprise test management and interconnect software.
One important new DAQ product was a two-slot Thunderbolt PXI/PXI Express mainframe selling for about 8.000 Danish kroner.
Anders Rohde from CIM presented their web tools based on off-the shelf technologies to create more comprehensive and easy-to-use tools to create live web pages of instruments.
The presentation aligned well with NI’s new strategy of supporting a broad range of industry standard tools and languages, instead of the “LabVIEW” for everything strategy which he gently poked fun at.
The final presentation by GPower “Modular Software: The Secret behind Low Cost and High Value” showcased their methods for efficient, re-usable software development.