Seminars highlight PXI interoperability

Q: What are the No Compromise seminars about?

A: The purpose of our seminars is to demonstrate to and convince customers that PXI products and software from multiple vendors will all work together. We have a half day of discussions and demonstrations, and afterward people can try some hands-on activity as well.

Q: PXI just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Isn't it well understood by now?

A: We did the “PXI 101” type of education years ago to tell folks why and how to use PXI, and everyone now understands that part of the story. But we realized as we talked with customers that many do not realize the degree of interoperability that PXI offers. Some people are still concerned about it all playing together if they were to buy boards from several vendors and software from yet another source.

Q: How did those concerns manifest themselves?

A: Customers were telling us that this or that product was close to what they wanted but not quite, and they wanted help making tradeoff decisions. We asked “Why not use this other board which is exactly what you need?” It turned out that they were making compromises so that they could buy everything from a single vendor to avoid any system-integration issues later.

Q: What is the source of those concerns?

A: We don't know all the reasons for this fear, but some may stem from old expectations based on other bus standards where mixing and matching didn't work. The VXIplug&play initiative, for instance, was known as “plug and pray” because of interoperability problems. Whatever the cause, we recognized that these concerns existed in the market and believe they are completely unjustified.

At Autotestcon 2007, for example, the PXI Systems Alliance (PXISA) had three demos using multiple vendors' products, and they were very successful. We based our No Compromise seminars along the same lines.

Q: Isn't conducting seminars the kind of thing the PXISA should be doing instead of companies?

A: Other industry organizations have large marketing budgets, but the PXISA is operating on a modest budget and can't afford to do these seminars as they cost a lot of money. While this is not an official PXISA seminar, it is open to participation by other member companies. In fact, we initially invited four or five others to join in but ended up with three only because we wanted to get going quickly and these three were ready to commit the time and money.

Q: How long will these seminars be offered?

A: It depends on the feedback. We are planning on half a dozen to begin with, but they may continue if interest is high. When we started our PXI 101 seminars in 2001, we originally planned only three, and were so successful we ended up doing 80 more.