An average day in the life of an electronics design engineer contains a number of challenges. From managing the cost of components and the entire design to keeping up with changes during the development of a design, designers are often hard pressed. Enter Avnet. The firm helps engineers accelerate the design cycle and get to the market faster. ELE Times caught up with Ramani Sundaresan, Managing Director, Avnet India, to discuss Avnet’s contribution in electronics designing to the Mangalyaan Mission of ISRO, Government of India. Here are the excerpts:
ELE Times: How is Avnet at the forefront of design support to design and application engineers across industry sectors?
Ramani Sundaresan: We help engineers accelerate the design cycle and get to the market faster. Our unique position in the ecosystem gives us access to technology providers with the latest and innovative products and solutions at every point in the IoT technology. This allows us to identify and customize the best solution to meet each customers’ needs. In India, we have a product design testing unit – Avnet Design Center, that allows customers to test their product designs. Our experienced engineers are onsite to offer technical advice and design support, helping the customers in accelerating the design cycle and getting their products to markets faster. Our testing service improves customer’s convenience and cost savings by helping them reduce the number of design iterations and the product certifying process at the authorized labs. We also offer addition option for customers to get the support they need online through our technical forums.
ELE Times: Technological advances have driven the need for a reduced time to market. How Avnet is aiding in the reduction of product development cycle time?
Ramani Sundaresan: From providing a community platform to the know-how, Avnet’s design and supply capabilities, coupled with its global line card presence, bring prototypes to volume production. The addition of Premier Farnell (including its element14 community) and Hackster.io last year expanded Avnet’s reach to an active community of more than 750,000 entrepreneurs, makers and engineers worldwide, and broadened its portfolio of design tools and technical solutions as well as 24/7 e-commerce expertise. Through its Dragon Innovation business, it is simplifying the manufacturing process – helping customers understand manufacturing costs and schedules, find factories and manage production as they scale their businesses, particularly in projects advancing the Internet of Things (IoT). These initiatives are all underpinned by Avnet’s electronic components and design and supply chain capabilities encompassing the entire cycle from idea to finished product. Our ecosystem supports customers at each stage of the product’s lifecycle, thereby shortening time to market.
ELE Times: What IoT products do you have? What all industries you are catering to? What support solutions do you have for design engineers in development?
Ramani Sundaresan: We help our customers in designing the devices and infrastructure that they need to connect, collect and transfer data on the cloud. Ranging from edge to enterprise, we work at several stages of a product development in an IoT project. Our end-to-end suite of IoT services include advisory and cloud and digital services among others. From supporting makers and start-ups to Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and enterprises, we provide solutions for several IoT initiatives.
We cater to many key industries including – Aerospace and defense, automotive and transportation, communications, embedded vision, energy, healthcare, home and building automation, industrial, lighting, security and surveillance and retail.
ELE Times: How the concept of IoT is revolutionising various connecting technologies and also our day to day working at home and at manufacturing units?
Ramani Sundaresan: We look at the entire IoT eco-system as a giant opportunity to solve myriad problems using technology. Whether it is to better logistics, to make a smarter vision system or to make a smarter way to track, it can be a very innovative solution to provide extra revenue earning methods to our customers- through optimal usage of technology.
Electronics in general and semiconductors in specific is in every core area of human life. And we play a pivotal role in the entire ecosystem by providing right guidance and support to each and every customer.
ELE Times: As hot new gadgets make our homes and industry smarter, they’re also making them more vulnerable. What do you say?
Ramani Sundaresan: Connected homes are a newer, emerging technology gaining popularity very quickly. With more of the devices and home appliances connecting to the Internet – smart TVs, webcams, gaming consoles, thermostats – it has become crucial to have a good security plan for a safer home network.
We have been a partner of choice when it comes to staying on top of the IoT wave. Our full suite of intelligent home management systems ensures the safety while streamlining the complex processes with cutting-edge technology so that our customers can up their IoT game and keep pace with latest industry developments.
ELE Times: What is the future of IoT? Are the concerns on security real? How they can be fixed?
Ramani Sundaresan: Ever since its inception, IoT has been exacerbating as one of the most transformational technology trends that is reshaping the ecosystems and eventually our worlds. In today’s complex and dynamic world, IoT is playing a vital role in providing solutions, products and ideas that are not only smart but tends to make people’s lives much simpler and better.
According to the report published by Forrester, Predictions 2018: IoT moves from ‘experimentation to business scale’, IoT will become the backbone of future customer value, developers will have a significant impact on platforms and initiatives, while security will remain a key concern.
For instance, data and device security in IoT continues to be a major issue, as organizations of all sizes struggle to find the right security regime to meet their needs.
Many companies in the IoT ecosystem are starting to realize how important it is to implement robust encryption policies that include high-quality cryptographic keys.
From the sensors you need to engage the physical environment all the way to cloud computing services using the collected sensor data to drive your application, Avnet has you covered. Avnet is an authorized source for the leading providers of each technology we represent. We’re actively engaged with our partners on technical and supply-chain initiatives in support of IoT.
Each supplier recognizes Avnet’s ability to bring together a complete solution, project manage the details and provide resources to facilitate any area of technical or operational support you require. Avnet’s partners know the caliber of the team we have to support your IoT vision which is why they trust us to coordinate activities on their behalf.
ELE Times:At IOT India, Avnet showcased Smart Jewellery where as it acts like a gadget for women safety that sends SOS message and raise alarm with a simple tap. What the product is all about? What technology is at work?
Ramani Sundaresan: Smart Jewellery is one of its kind Bluetooth Jewellery for women that assures their safety in case of emergency. We in partnership with Ambet Innova have made this gadget that works with the help of with the help of IVY application and can be easily installed in a mobile phone and connected to the device with the help of the Bluetooth.
At the very first sight, the necklace might look like any usual jewellery but the device installed in these jewellery pieces tends to save women from stalkers and eve-teasers. Other than necklaces, the device is also available in the form of bracelets.
The necklace is backed by two different forms of batteries- a chargeable one that has a battery life of 3-4 days and a coin battery that has the capability to run for ten days. In the case of emergency, the user can press the button mounted on the back of the device. If the button is pressed once the device immediately sends an alert message to three contacts which have been saved in SOS.
ELE Times: What is Avnet’s contribution to the IT sector?
Ramani Sundaresan: With the IT sector still growing in India the needs for Servers in India is on the rise for data storage and data mining. Avnet plays a key role in these sectors by promoting Memory products from our partners.
ELE Times: What is Avnet’s contribution to Mangalyaan mission?
Ramani Sundaresan: Avnet participates in all Space application projects and is closely working with the Space agency SAC (Space Application Centre).
ELE Times: What are at the helm of affairs that made Avnet what it is today?
Ramani Sundaresan: There are several reasons why Avnet is a leading distributor and technology provider. The one key factor is that Avnet has evolved itself over the years to the changing demands of the customers it serves and to the fast paced technology requirements. From a pure play supply chain logistics partner, Avnet over the years has also value added to its customers by providing technical support for the cutting edge components it supplies, to supporting reference and full blown product designs to customers. Of course all these changes have been adapted by Avnet, thanks to the great support from the partners that we represent and our team at the various geographic locations serving the customers. We are truly now a value added technology partner to the customer.
Managing Director, Avnet India
