Complexity breeds quality challenges (continued)
A continuation of our interview with Jim Iuliano, president and CEO of Azimuth Systems, which appeared in the December 2008/January 2009 Viewpoint column.
By Larry Maloney, Contributing Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 12/1/2008 2:00:00 AM
 JIM IULIANO President and CEO Azimuth Systems Acton, MA Jim Iuliano has more than a decade of CEO experience in the semiconductor, life sciences, display, and optical systems industries. Prior to joining Azimuth Systems, he was an entrepreneur in residence at North Bridge Venture Partners. Previously, he served as president and CEO of E Ink, a privately held materials technology company, and before that he headed Molecular Devices, an analytical instrumentation company in life sciences. Earlier in his career, Iuliano worked at both IBM and VLSI Technology. He holds a BS from Boston College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Contributing editor Larry Maloney conducted a phone interview with Iuliano on the need for innovative test solutions for sophisticated communications devices. Read the first part of this interview. |
Q: What was Azimuth’s most significant new product of 2008?
A: Increasingly, our customers want to know not only how a device performs under motion but also how it will perform in an actual channel environment. We introduced our first MIMO channel emulator in 2005 to target WiFi applications, and we expanded that product offering in 2007 for WiMAX. This year, we introduced in beta the ACE MX, which supports frequencies between 450 MHz and 6 GHz. It meets the needs of all relevant wireless technologies and standards in the world of cellular, including LTE. This new platform, which will be on the market in the first quarter of 2009, delivers excellent RF fidelity and ease of use. And it’s scalable, covering applications from entry-level solutions up to the most sophisticated research needs. We believe that the MX will open up new markets for us and be our major growth driver in 2009 and beyond.
Q: What are some other convergence issues facing test companies?
A: LTE (long-term evolution) will certainly drive more convergence challenges, particularly as a result of providing much higher data-rate transmission for multimedia applications. At the same time, there is a big installed base of legacy 2G and 3G systems that companies won’t want to abandon to move purely to an LTE standard. So, as LTE develops, companies will still have to test for backward compatibility with the incumbent 2G and 3G products and technologies.
Q: Which of your customer segments shows the greatest growth potential?
A: One of the strengths of our model is that we have a very diversified customer base, with more than 130 wireless customers worldwide and an installed base of more than 1000 modules. We have semiconductor providers like Marvell and Broadcom, as well as infrastructure firms like Motorola, Samsung, and Cisco that make base stations and access points. Then, there are consumer-electronics firms, such as Belkin. Finally, we sell our test equipment to service providers, such as T-Mobile. A major change we are seeing is customers wanting to standardize their supply chain around a particular test solution. They want automated, reproducible tests so that they can correlate measurements with their suppliers, such as silicon producers with their ODMs (original design manufacturers).
Q: What’s involved with your new collaboration with Keithley for RF test?
A: On Azimuth’s part, it starts with our channel emulator for simulating the RF environment for MIMO (multiple input/multiple output) applications. Once the emulator creates that environment, there are a number of specific tests that you may want to run on a mobile device or a base station, such as measuring packet-error rate and bit-error rate under varying channel conditions. This is where Keithley’s RF test systems come into play.
Keithley’s vector signal analyzers and signal generators offer MIMO configurations for up to 8x8 systems, and its 4x4 RF test system provides frequency coverage from 400 MHz to 6 GHz. In essence, our partnership saves customers the time and expense of developing a do-it-yourself test solution, while ensuring that their 4G and WiMAX devices deliver the high throughput that their subscribers expect. So, this was an opportunity for us to again provide a turnkey solution, as we did with the Agilent partnership mentioned earlier.
Q: So, these partnerships present some good opportunities for you, as test engineers are under pressure to develop solutions faster.
A: That’s correct. I’d point to one very large player in the cellular domain that told us how they need to bring in the test solution much earlier in the design phase. The reason is that test challenges often become the limiting factor in development. So, we’re developing a more collaborative relationship with customers in the development process. Particularly in such emerging areas as LTE, customers want to make sure that they have the test solutions in hand as they develop new technology.
Test is crucial to product success because of the consumer’s demand for high quality, yet these new communications devices are becoming more and more sophisticated. With MIMO, for example, you’ve got multiple antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver, and numerous interferences in between. Couple that with an ever larger number of MIMO devices from multiple vendors, and the test challenge grows geometrically.
Q: How do Azimuth test solutions support product certification?
A: The market we grew up with was WiFi. We believe we’re the leader in performance tests for WiFi, and a big part of our product offering in WiFi centers on certification. We have a compliance tester called the ADEPT WFA that is part of the WiFi Alliance test bed. Early this year, we also introduced the AzCert test suite to provide precertification testing for the new 802.11n wireless networking standard.
Q: How important is software to the future direction of your technology?
A: Software development is one of the single greatest differentiation points for us. Our Director and Studio software, which manage our hardware and perform data analysis, allow our test engineer customers to quickly and easily get up to speed on our test solutions. This software, together with firmware and a superior graphical user interface, make our sophisticated test hardware as easy to use for a technician as it is for a PhD scientist.
Q: Where are you putting your focus in R&D?
A: With the new ACE MX emulator, we’ve already accomplished the goal of creating a platform that can play in a broad frequency range—450 MHz to 6 GHz. The challenge now from a technology standpoint is to deal with more computationally complex channel-emulation algorithms and models. We also need to drive integration with other test tools, such as base-station emulators, and we need to look at specific application tests within emulated environments.
Q: Moving forward, what will be your biggest growth opportunities?
A: Three areas. Channel emulation will continue to grow more and more mainstream, which will be a terrific engine for growth for Azimuth. Another good opportunity will be international. Like most US startups, our initial focus was North America, but this year, our business was split about evenly between North America and international markets. Next year, we’ll probably grow to 60% international and eventually to 70%. Finally, we’ll continue to drive new partnerships for providing turnkey solutions for the tough test challenges that result from increasing product complexity.
Read the first part of this interview.
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