To quote Shakespeare’s Richard III, ”Now is the winter of our discontent”, or at least, we’re hoping that it doesn’t get much “colder”!  While pundits do say ”it” will still get worse before it gets better, the current economic climate will not last forever.  So, ever the optimist, the longer we’re in it, the closer we are to the end!

However, in this period of job (in)security, we’d like to announce that Xuropa has just opened two ”Job Centers” within the Online Electronic Design Community.

• Career Center: Seeking Career Positions - where to post a description of the ideal job you’re looking for
• Career Center: Seeking Professionals - where to post a description of the professional you’re looking to hire

It’s perfectly FREE for anyone to list positions that are open and for job seekers to post their ideal career move.  Just go to one of the Job Center Online Booths and make your entry in the Forum or browse the positions and professionals as the forums become populated.

Once you’ve made a post to the Forum you’ll be automatically updated with any responses.  If you want to contact the poster, go to the posters Professional Profile and send them a message.  Email addresses are kept strictly confidential, but we facilitate you making the connection.

Note however that we do not allow any anonymous postings.

Of course, this ties in closely to your Professional Profile on Xuropa.  Ensure this is current either manually or by importing your LinkedIn profile.  Also, make sure your list of specializations and skills is up to date.  LinkedIn doesn’t cover these aspects of an electronic design professionals background, so you’ll need to do this manually.

Good luck, what ever you’re looking for!

Posted under Community, career, industry

In case you haven’t heard, one of the companies that did well in 2008 was Rolls-Royce.  Yes, they did!  And yes, the same company who wasn’t doing so well not so long ago.  What did they do differently?

What Rolls-Royce did was to focus back on their core competency - pursuing technical advances and keeping close with their airline customers.  To quote Winston Churchill who said would like to see finance “less proud and industry more content”, this is another reminder that a lot of Silicon Valley companies must refocus back on technology, and not just offering more attractive “deals” to their customers instead.

The thought of refocusing technology then translates into focusing ondisruptive innovation.  In his book, Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen (Harvard Business School) writes that sustaining innovation (the opposite of disruptive innovation) ends up providing more technology to the high end users than what they are willing to pay for.  When the disruptive innovation comes, it provides a new set of less demanding users with less technology but at a state of the art.  There are lots of examples for this (PC vs. iPhones, etc.).  To combat the disruptive innovation, companies with sustaining innovation resort to financial packages to incentivize the less demanding users to stay with the incumbent (sustaining) technology.  

I get the feeling that this has been occurring a lot in Silicon Valley.  Instead of focusing on real (disruptive) innovation, the focus has been on ways to innovate the purchase process.  I saw that first hand at Cadence where a new number of deal structures were used on a regular basis.  In my last quarters there, the sales account review meetings had a different air about them.  In those meetings, the room was filled by finance and legal personnel, rather than field or solution engineers.  More than 75% of the discussion in those meetings was on contract restructuring and revenue recognition rules, than technology and sales (i.e. actually selling something) strategy.

As we have it, Cadence is now refocusing on technology and innovation.  That is the right move.  The key question is how to stay away from the temptations of “financial innovation”.

Posted under business, industry, marketing

 There’s always a lot going on in the electronic design industry, but recently it seems particularly active.  It’s become a routine of mine to cruise the news feeds we bring into Xuropa to get a sense of what’s going on at different points in the value chain.

Here is a brief snapshop of what I saw today

Embedded Systems

Looking to the embedded world, there’s an interesting “the news of my demise is greatly exaggerated” post over at the Windows Embedded Blog.  After comments about how little Windows CE gets mentioned and a recent New York Times article focuses on Windows 7 for a “small world”, there was some “divining” (”wishing”?) going on in the blogosphere.

According to Mike Hall of Microsoft, they’re hard at work on a new release of the OS right now.  Hopefully it fixes all of the bugs that I ran into during my fated experience with it on the HTC Dash.  (Bad, bad memories.)

Bringing the methodology and tools of application level software and hardware platform development closer together appears to be paramount when the two are developed by different companies.  A point made by Jim Hogan in an interview with Ed Sperling.

Consumer Industry

Although news of the change in fortune of Steve Job’s health last week was sad, the amount of coverage it received was staggering.  Everywhere I turned my radio “dial” on the day of the announcement had it every 15 to 20 minutes.  Even the BBC was running it as the top or second news summary item throughout the day.

Now that the dust has settled and the reality of the situation has started to set in, speculation on succession has begun.  The clear lesson for the electronic design industry is the process of succession itself.  The development of a deep management bench and the instilling of a clear direction and set of corporate values are paramount.

EDA Industry

It was a breath of fresh air to read that OneSpin have spun their technology into a family of interoperable formal verification products.  The real news was the emphasis on usability they appear to have taken.  This is an excellent example of a company that has listened to their customer, really understood the reason for slower-than-liked adoption, and then has done something about it.

Too many EDA companies believe that it’s just “one more feature” that will make all the difference in the world.  When in reality it’s the usability of the features they already have and the company’s ability to communicate the value of them that’s at fault.

This reminds me of Beach Solutions, who unfortunately met their demise late last year.  They struggled for years with confusing messaging and a technology lead.  By the time the products were packaged into something comprehensible to the customer, and the emphasis was moved from “what it is” to “what it does”, it was too late.  They’d managed to go from little-to-no engagements to evaluations all over the globe in a matter of months.  Unfortunately the EDA sales process and the waning world economy appear to have taken their toll.

The curious thing is the acquisition by Duolog.  Given that their new marketing at DAC 2008 was almost identical to Beach’s one would have thought they didn’t need the Beach technology.

There are some more sobering words and grim interpretations about the industry from Gabe Moretti over at EDA Design Line. 

Semiconductor Woes

ChipMOS files a lien against Spansion inventory and equipment for the $18M it is owed.  That’s a tremendous amount of money in any economy, and a sure sign of trouble when vendors start suing customers.  There’s also a rumor that Spansion may file Chapter 11.

Technology Sector Jobs

There was some light at the end of the tunnel reported up in Oregon by Mike Rogoway.  According to his information, tech industry employment figures for Oregon improved in December.  He also has a tally of tech job losses in the state.  I wonder if someone is keeping score in Silicon Valley.

EDA Investment & Value

There was a great interview by Ed Sperling of Jim Hogan.  He covered many macro-level aspects of the EDA industry from the business model, technical challenges, and industry make-up.  More on this interview here.

Posted under business, industry, marketing

The writing on the wall just keeps on getting writ larger.

It keeps feeling like deja vu every time I listen to Jim Hogan describe the status of the EDA industry and what needs to be done to move it forward.  He’s been saying it for years, and everyone needs to be listening very closely.

The full interview is here over at Ed Sperling’s blog, but here’s a summary. (The punchline is at the end.)

It was interesting to hear when Ed asked Jim what the missing technology pieces are within EDA.  Jim answered:

• System level knowledge (ie. the end markets)
• Software knowledge (ie. how to support scalable software design practices)
• Supply chain management

Notice something?  It’s not about technology!  For progress to be made within EDA, the emphasis needs to be on the business of electronic design and how systems are developed.

Incorporation of software development into EDA: 

Embedded RTOS and protocols are available, predictable and commodities; the challenge is at the application level and being able to predict behavior there.  The industry as a whole has little to no exposure at this level.

Does Jim see a merger of two worlds:

There are too few players that have worked both sides to make this feasible.  There needs to be greater interoperability and mutual sign-off between the development flows.

Acquisitions:

EDA buys a software company?  No.  Collaboration more likely.  IP company aggregation more likely within EDA; especially as it relates to distribution.

Are there bargains out there: 

The business rules have changed.  Asset purchases are more likely rather than out-and-out M&A (re. Beach IP acquisition).  In the past valuations were the stumbling block in Private-Private acquisitions.  But given the current environment this will become less of a hurdle.

The Value that EDA Provides:

The value is not in EDA as it is traditionally thought of at all.  For EDA companies to build value and move forward they need to take on more of what their customers currently do themselves.  ie. instead of just providing tools, EDA needs to become more of a “General Contractor”.

Here are some ways that EDA could move forward in the value chain, with some ideas that I’ve added in:

• License sub-systems and not just IP cores

There are examples of this, such as MIPS.  They have their platform strategy, but from what I’ve been able to tell, it hasn’t met with too much success.  As before, this likely has more to do with everything around the IP rather than the IP itself.

• Do more of the design for the customer…maybe the whole design

Jim talked about this a bit in the interview.  Some companies are doing this.

• Outsourced CAD

This builds upon the concept of SaaS and Cloud Computing that I’ve talked about in the past.  Essentially, if EDA companies take on directly the maintenance and provision of the CAD team by providing their technology through SaaS/Cloud Computing models they’d be adding value to the customer while removing some of their Capex and Opex outlays.  That should be a whole heck of a lot of value to capitalize upon.

• System Level design and development

This comes back to ESL, but it needs to be approached from the perspective of how systems are designed instead of how EDA tools are used and by whom.  Again, it’s not the technology, but the use model and business models.

In summary, for the business of EDA to grow it needs to focus on two things:

1. The business of EDA
2. The way systems are developed

Posted under business, industry, marketing

Recently, everywhere I look there is news and more news on how about the economy is doing.  I constantly read about layoff, company closings, etc.  And I hear about it in all sectors.  If someone doesn’t by now know about what’s going on, he or she probably just doesn’t want to know.

The press is treating the economy just as it does with any other sensational news.  And I understand sensationalism:  Many times in my career, press was going out of their way to hail my company and at times me, myself, and couldn’t stop reporting the great subjects.  Nevertheless, as soon as a bit of market momentum was lost, press was all over how bad we were doing - often making it sound like we won’t be in business for more than a couple of weeks.  Yes, I have see the quick turn with my own eyes many times.  Needs to say, these negative stories about the companies (even when we were doing much better than OK), leads to loss of key employees and more importantly key customers as they just believe what the read, or at least what they read significantly affects their purchase decisions.

Negative news is destructively self-fulfilling.  It’s no surprise that the announcement of layoffs everywhere, doesn’t help but encourage companies to invest less in workforce, which leads to lack of productivity, and eventually to more cuts.

I am a big proponent of free press.  I am also a huge proponent of free market (and less/no intervention of government in business).  Nevertheless, I very well see the point of having a stimulus package and how it could help re-vitalize the economy.  At the same time, I believe, if the government is to interfere with free market, it would behoove us all if it could also drive some sort of “management” (and I use that term very carefully) on press.  I do realize that this is very dangerous, but I strongly believe as long as the sensationalism of news is out there, making a recovery would take longer than it could.  Bad news always sells better than good news.

The stimulus package will help the economy.  We now need a disciplined, non-sensationalist press “package”to reinvigorate the recovery itself.  I’m not suggesting to lie or suppress the bad news, I’m just asking not to blow things out of proportions.

Posted under business, industry, marketing

We’ve just completed a new video providing a summary of some of the features of the Xuropa Online Electronic Design Community.  The biggest challenge was keeping the video short and choosing which features to highlight. 

The only way to really understand exactly what the Xuropa Community is about and what it can do for you is to register and sign-in.  But for those that would like to “look before they leap” - enjoy:

Here’s the transcript:

“Unlike any other online community, the Xuropa community is dedicated to the entire electronic design industry.  It has been designed and built for electronic design professionals by electronic design professionals.

Among the many tools Within this select community you can:

1. Use actual electronic design software to learn new skills or consider new tool acquisitions

Online Lab Learning and Exploration Environment

2. View and navigate the industry and your network as a visual map

The Industry Mapped Around You

3. See what news is hot to read through a peer voting tool

Peer Voting Tool Filters Hot News to the Top

4. Gain recognition for your experience and expertise within the industry.

Within a Xuropa Online Lab you gain access to actual electronic design tools for you to use diretly via your web browser.  There are no downloads, no installations and no configuration necessary.  Within an Online Lab, in this case it is the Cadence MIPI Verification Lab, you have the tool and all of the related documentation at your fingertips.  Use this area to learn about a new protocol, a new tool and verification methodology.  You can also use this environment to evaluate the products in your consideration for licensing them from the vendor.  Again, without the need to install anythng on your local workstation.

We put you at the center of the electronic design industry.  Based upon your professional profile, we map all of the electronic design professionals within the community.  This way you can see those people with similar backgrounds who might be interesting to network with.  You can also begin to understand the portability of your skills and specializations into different fields and domains.

To do this we go further than any other online networking tool.  Within your Xuropa Professional Profile you add Specializations, such as RTL Design Verification or System Level Architect.  You can also add specific skills, such as protocols, software languages or verification methodologies.

News articles are brought in from all over the web and ranked by the number of views and the number of votes each has received.  We also categorize each article into different fields so you can focus on the important news of the day.  You can also browse industry news feeds that you select in your customized feed view.

In today’s economic environment it is crucial that you’re able to differentiate yourself and be recognized for your expertise.  Within Xuropa you can do this by writing reviews of products and technology you have used or developed.  These are linked to your Professional Profile.  If you don’t have time to write a review you can quickly share your experience by rating products and technology

These is just a short summary of the types of tools available to you within the Xuropa Online Community.

Click here to register for the Xuropa Online Electronic Design Community.

Posted under Features, Xuropa

Now that 2009 is well underway, I took a quick look at Xuropa membership registrations and the high-level makeup of the Xuropa community. 

Up until the end of last year, there was a pretty even split between the number of people that registered under the different electronic design fields (EDA, IP, Semiconductor, Software, and System).   The proportion of professionals that associated themselves with the Semiconductor and EDA fields were a little bit ahead, but not by much. 

Over the past few weeks this has changed.  Here’s the split as of today:

System: 17%
Software: 17%
Semiconductor:47%
IP: 13%
EDA: 41%

Considering the relative size of the Semiconductor segment in terms of employees I would expect this profile to become more pronounced.  You can see this breakdown for yourself within the Community area of the platform.

Posted under Community

A couple of weeks ago, Eric Mangini, was fired as the head coach of New York Jets.  He was the same person who up to only a few weeks before was referred to Man-genius, for his smarts and how those smarts translated to how his teams performed on the field.  Within a week of his firing, he was hired as the new head coach of Cleveland Browns, as the Browns management was looking for someone with previous head coaching experience.  I find it very interesting that someone can go from genius, to no-longer-genius, to smart-and-experienced in a matter weeks.

What does all that have to with Silicon Valley??  A lot.  I have seen many CEO appointment done in the same way head coaches are fired and hired in NFL.  A few months ago I got a call from an executive recruiter (who had previously placed me as a VP of marketing) checking unsolicitated references on a couple of CEO candidates whom I knew.  Both of those candidates had previous CEO experience, and to be honest, not good ones.  I gave my fair and honest feedback to the recruiter, and then asked him if I could throw my name in the hat (just to check his reaction).  His answer was simple: The board has instructed me to only look for ex-CEO’s (regardless of how ineffective they have been).  The recruiter had no stock in the company otherwise he wouldn’t have chased either one of those candidates.

It’s always been obvious to me that companies hire resumes - they don’t hire people.  In this example, if the board cared to see who they were hiring, they would have never hired any of those CEOs.

That explains why some CEOs spend more time producing PR for themselves while at the job, than they companies they work for or the products they market.  I have often see more news about a company’s CEO than their technology or products.  If you notice the track records for those CEOs, they are the ones who consistently ride one company to the next (bigger and better).  On the other hand, the CEO’s who focus on their companies and their employees, end up staying there for long periods of time (sometimes their entire life) and keep growing the company through technology and products.

The lesson: It’s not about what you do, what you deliver, or what you enable.  It’s about what you’re thought of possibly doing, delivering, or enabling.

Posted under Xuropa, industry

There have been many ground-breaking ideas in business that have taken a long time, and a great deal of resistance before they eventually prevailed.  It’s really hard to predict them or know early on which idea would end up as the one standing last.

Posted under Xuropa, business, industry, marketing

Ron Ploof writes a very interesting and informative blog about “social” or “new” media and it’s impact on business and industries.  It’s a very useful read.

The title of a recent post caught my eye.  Entitled “Norman Rockwell New Media“, he draws an analogy between new media adoption by corporations and different ways to organize towns.

Ron broke new media adoption into two camps - it’s either central and deeply intertwined with the business (Main Street Town), or it’s on the periphery and barely touches the core business (Norman Rockwell Town).

This doesn’t quite work for the adoption of new media within the electronic design industry however.  There are some industry leaders that have adopted new media wholeheartedly, and are looking to do more.  But on the whole the landscapes of these “towns” appear quite untouched by new media.  But this is changing.

Living in California, a different analogy came to mind.  By and large, it’s kind of like train stations here - if a station exists it’s on the outskirts of town, rarely used, and sadly out of date.  However, these companies have begun to see that the roads are crumbling and gas prices are too volatile to keep using the car cost effectively.  And so they’re looking to put in some new infrastructure and change their behaviors.

Specifically, their business processes are long and require a lot of complex interactions (demonstrations, training, and evaluations for example).  Now that the electronic design industry is truly global it is no longer cost-effective or efficient to carry out all of these interactions in person or even directly.

Many companies use point communication tools (webex, skype, etc.) to lower costs.  But this is not “new media” - ie. these tools cannot be leveraged when they’re not being used.  And this is what we need - leverage.

An online environment that is easy to manage and provides the tools, controls, and recognition mechanisms for engineers to see the value of your product and discuss it with their colleagues and friends.  That’s leverage.  It’s also a pretty neat description of Xuropa.

Click here to register for the Xuropa Online Electronic Design Community

Posted under Features, business, industry, marketing