To: Thassico who wrote (312 ) 1/5/1999 1:28:00 PM From: Rob S. Read Replies (1) | Respond to
Peter seems very certain that they will soon have some agreements with the likes of Alcatel. I don't entirely agree with their approach - relying on the OEMs to do the early product builds and more extensive field product testing. My strategy would probably be to build up a pilot production run internally - probably requiring some additional funding. Then I would give these out to a few select OEMs in exchange for their commitment to do open field-testing and turn over all the compiled data. That move would either force one or more OEMs to move more aggressively or would result in the concrete data that is needed to support product claims. All the empirical data in the world doesn't match up to the proof of real world testing in actual applications. That is also how you turn fence sitters into advocates. But, then again, I don't know the details of what is going on in forging these relationships. I have also been involved in technology development and product licensing arrangements with a small technology company (privately held) that secured a lucrative product development agreement and patent and technology licensing agreement. The license was contingent on the proof that the product concept worked. The company taking such a license prior to field trials doesn't have that much to loose - before they commit millions to production they will find out if the product is viable both from a technical standpoint and in regards to product cost and marketable features. Usually the more confident you are about the product concept, the less you are willing to undergo the cost of gearing up for internal production. That does make the initial license agreements very critical - particularly true for new technical approaches. delSecur's product development and position very much reminds me of my earlier experience with "amplitude domain signal acquisition" or ADSAC as we called it - a different way of slicing up analog waveforms during the analog waveform data acquisition stage and storing the data. We had a 180 degrees out of phase way of looking at waveform acquisition. We showed the prototype to many seasoned experts in the oscilloscope (Tektronix, HP, Fluke and others) and fiber-optic time domain reflectometry field (used to measure the quality of fiber-optic transmission lines): the result was that they were all amazed with what our little black box could accomplish but they could not believe that it worked as well as it did. Since it went against conventional approaches, there was obviously something wrong with the approach - they thought that one of the brilliant people who had worked in the advanced data acquisition fields would surely have tried that approach before. Our contention was that once the method was committed to custom silicon that would greatly increase the speed and reduce the power consumption, it would enable product capable of very high acquisition rates at reduced cost and reduced power. The cost of doing the finite design work and tooling the custom silicon was around $500,000. We got about that much under the pre-production agreement and a 5% royalty once it went into production. This was similar to delSecur in that you could debate the theoretical results of the concept for years - likely never coming to a concrete consensus. The ONLY way to prove the advanced concept was to build the damn thing. It then either worked or didn't. In the case I was involved in, we boldly sold the technology to a major measurement instruments company and it developed into the most successful product line in the company's long history (hand-held oscilloscope).
