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The steamroller rolls on
November 9, 2006

In August 1993, Paul Schreier wrote "What can stop the steamroller?" where he likened National Instruments to Microsoft. Schreier proclaimed that NI's "products dominate in key markets and have become the standard for comparison." That's even more true today because numerous hardware and software competitors have fallen by the wayside. But, you still have more choices for instrument hardware and software than you do for an operating system or an office suite. I also suspect that a far lower percentage of NI customers complain about its products than do Microsoft's customers.

In his column, Schreier asked "can competitors stop the steamroller?" and he then suggested that an effort from Data Translation and Hewlett-Packard (now Agilent) might do that. It didn't. Neither did a similar alliance between Agilent and Measurement Computing. In both cases HP/Agilent developed a version of Vee for the data-acquisition card makers.

These are just two examples of attempts to stop the steamroller, but there are others. In 1992 the data-acquisition industry tried to standardize on a programming interface for data-acquisiton cards. A common programming interface would have loosened NI's grip. The industry tried again in 1998. The second attempt, the Open Data Acquisition Association, failed in part because NI didn't participate--understandably so, too.

Looking back on the data-acquisition business, I see events that lend viability to Schreier's early observation. (Remember that LabView for Windows was on the market for only about a year at the time of the editorial.) Some events revolved around companies that NI acquired. The three most notables were Captial Equipment in 2003 followed by Measurement Computing and IOtech in 2005. These three companies operate as NI subsidiaries.

Numerous software competitors have fallen by the wayside. They include WaveTest (acquired by NI), Labtech Notebook (acquired by Measurement Computing, later acquired by NI and now gone), Daq Designer by Intelligent Instrumentation (off the market) and TekTMS by Tektronix (off the market).

Several makers of data-acquisition boards have either closed, exited the business, or been acquired. For example, Measurement Computing acquired a line of data-acquisition cards from Analogic prior to the NI takeover. Datel, once a mker of high-end data-acquisition boards, has also exited the market. NI does have numerous competitors, especially in hardware. Most of them have developed software hooks to LabView.

The steamroller is still rolling.

Posted by Martin Rowe on November 9, 2006 | Comments (0)