Editorial

Who's Got the Power? Am I wrong that the importance of engineers to the bottom line doesn't seem to matter when it comes to corporate decisions on platforms? by Jonah McLeod

The 70,000 readers of ISD design the most complex ICs on the planet. You, the readers, represent a powerful minority that corporate management has largely taken for granted. Given your obvious importance to your companies and to the industry as a whole, why do your concerns go unheeded?

You have several obvious strengths, particularly your impact on the bottom line. The profitability of an electronics company depends directly on the productivity of its engineers. Thus management continually concerns itself with how to make you more productive by looking for better tools and faster computing platforms.

Your technical knowledge and the nature of your work are another strength. Often, other departments look to you to determine what computing resources to use. They figure that you understand computers from the inside and that any system that can handle the industrial-strength applications in engineering will probably do well on mission-critical elements in the rest of the corporation.

On the other hand, you have several serious weaknesses as buyers or specifiers. Your major drawback is your small numbers absolutely and, within large system companies, relatively. Hardware vendors such as Sun and Hewlett-Packard can justify supplying such a small group of demanding buyers only by selling them high-priced items. However, most designers lack the authority to sign for big-ticket purchases. Thus you, the users, can make a recommendation, but you can't sign the purchase order.

As a result, vendors of big-ticket items have typically gone around the engineers, preferring to market and sell to corporate MIS and engineering management--the people who write the checks.

This marketing strategy takes the ultimate user, the design engineer, for granted. The vendors need not convince you of the efficacy of their solution. Why spend money communicating any message to you? They can aim their marketing and selling message directly to the person who can sign the PO.

The ultimate example is Microsoft. The company has worked largely with IS departments to promote the corporate-wide use of Windows NT. It has likewise used its considerable marketing and selling clout to convince top management at EDA companies, notably Cadence and Synopsys , to port their tools to Windows NT.

The cooperation between Microsoft and those two vendors is further proof that EDA decisions are being made without considering the ultimate user. Did Cadence and Synopsys survey their existing customer base to determine that their users wanted Windows NT versions of the tools? Certainly the designers who have shown their disdain for EDA on NT weren't contacted for their opinion. For their part, Cadence and Synopsys would almost certainly say that the customers they talk to--managers, that is--expressed a wish for tools on NT, but that's precisely the point: you, the engineers, are being bypassed.

(The deal between Microsoft and the various EDA vendors is remarkable for yet another reason. Major EDA companies have refused requests from most computer makers--in particular, Digital Equipment, IBM, and Silicon Graphics--to port EDA tools to their versions of Unix. Any large equipment company wanting tools ported to its operating system must shell out a hefty fee of $1 million to $2 million. Microsoft, in contrast, pays no fee for ports to NT.)

I'd like to hear that I'm completely wrong in my assessment of the process by which EDA platforms and tools are sold and bought. If you have an impact on these decisions beyond simply recommending what you would like, I'd like to know. Send me an e-mail and tell me you have clout and I'll publish the results. Maybe vendors will then give more weight to which hardware platform and operating system you prefer (and which EDA tools you want to use).

Finally, I'd like to thank all the readers who took the time to send e-mail messages regarding the editorials I wrote in April, May, and June on Linux and NT. We reported on many of your comments in the July and August issues ("Linux vs. NT: Engineers Speak Out,"), as well as adding a few more in this issue. I was able to respond to many of you, but I missed many more. To all of you, I want to say thanks.

To voice an opinion on this or any Integrated System Design article, please email your message to miker@isdmag.com.

integrated system design  September 1998