Active

Although PICMG is based in the USA, it truly is a global organization.  In fact, the breakdown of membership is fairly evenly distributed.   With all of the current PICMG officers located in the USA, we have made an effort to reach out to our Europe and Asian members.  In March, we met with dozens and European and other vendors at Embedded World to address the views, strategic roadmaps, and concerns of our members.  Last month, I was privileged to visit members in Taiwan, Japan, and China.  My trip included Medical and Design shows in Taiwan and Japan as well as Industrial Automation and Telecom shows in China.  The members had excellent ideas to continue to improve and enhance existing specifications.  It was also very beneficial to understand the local needs of each market.   Stay tuned in the coming months for changes to address those needs.

Other efforts included solidifying a barter agreement with a key embedded trade show supplier in Japan and “evangelizing” both PICMG and our members’ products.  There was often true excitement from the potential users in seeing the new PICMG Overview Brochure  and my pointing to the multiple vendors in their country from the Executive Members list.  (This is another benefit of being an Exec Member, we didn’t have space to list everyone, so the Execs are printed on the brochure!)

A key topic during the Asia trip was our Industrial IoT initiative.  PICMG has been exploring interest in a specification and have been having open, informal discussions with several members and key contacts at the Industrial IoT Consortium (IoT), Fog Computing, Flexible Factory Project, contacts at Intel and Cisco, and some specialists in IoT security.  If you are exploring IoT products, I highly recommend you join the calls, which are open.  But note, we are hoping to transition to the new specification phase soon.

If you have any questions on PICMG’s global activities, feel free to contact us at [email protected]

Justin Moll

Vice President of Marketing

PICMG

The Embedded Tech Trends (ETT) media event was held in New Orleans last week and it should come as no surprise that the event was very well attended!  The quality of the presentations and media interaction was superb.  Three of the PICMG officers were in attendance.  With the new PICMG leadership, there were very important messages we wanted to convey to our colleagues in attendance.

1. Activity & presence

We intend for PICMG to be much more active and be more vocal about our efforts.  There are a lot of hidden gems and hot spots of activity for the various PICMG specifications.  We want all of you to hear about the successes, the trends, and the upcoming efforts in the community.

2. Work more closely with the publications & our members

The PICMG leadership wants to work closely with all of the various publications across the electronics spectrum.  Do you know of a new program using a PICMG technology?  Let us know and when appropriate we will help spread the word!

3. Closer communication with VITA and other groups

Jess Isquith and I spoke with VITA’s Jerry Gipper about closer collaboration between the groups.  With significant overlap of members and many of the same goals, it makes sense for the two organizations to explore areas of collaboration for mutual benefit.

4. PICMG – Commercial | Industrial | Rugged

You may notice PICMG using these words — Commercial, Industrial, Rugged.   While VITA is almost completely Mil/Aero, we want to remind the industry that PICMG is well diversified in Industrial, Transportation, Mil/Aero, Medical, Physics/Research, Energy, Communications, and many other industries.

5. We are Rugged too

With the incredible success of the xTCA specifications in Communications, many in the industry forget that PICMG has very rugged implementations of CompactPCI/Serial, AdvancedTCA, MicroTCA, PICMG 1.3, and COM Express.  CompactPCI Serial for Space and Rugged COM Express are on the way.  Let’s not forget that its CompactPCI on the Mars Rover over 225 million kilometers away.

We at PICMG look forward to many exciting advances to come in 2017 and beyond.

Justin Moll, VP of Marketing

2017 marks significant changes for PICMG. As your new president, I am excited to work with incoming VP of Marketing, Justin Moll, returning officers Doug Sandy and Michael Munroe, and our 150+ members. Our key organizational initiatives for this year include modernizing and updating our specifications distribution, creating user groups for standards and families, encouraging collaboration with complementary standards organizations, and starting a university outreach program.

Active standards work will lead to substantial enhancements of COM Express, MicroTCA, CompactPCI Serial Space and AdvancedTCA. PICMG-based product shipments are positioned for a strong year due to the continued growth of COM Express, the adoption of CompactPCI Serial, and the steady deployments of other standards. Over one third of PICMG members will exhibit at Embedded World in March, and we officers will there to support and meet with you.

If you are interested in any of the initiatives and activities mentioned, please contact me at [email protected] or all of the officers at [email protected]. Participation and member driven innovation are the keys to our future success and we thank you for your support.