2000 Annual Report

Customer-Defined Solutions

We empower customers with the freedom to define their own solutions. Our off-the-shelf tools ship without predetermined functions. We leave that up to the customer who must meet their own individual needs. With our open software, customers can easily customize their NI measurement system. We make designing, developing, prototyping, testing, and maintaining their solutions quick and easy.

Whether they work in R&D, design and validation, manufacturing, manufacturing test, or service, our customers depend on NI for custom computer-based and networked measurement and automation solutions. Customers have the freedom to mix and match hardware to meet their changing needs. Because we adopt and use open standards, customers can combine our products with third-party products or existing measurement systems, giving them ultimate control of their solution.

Diverse Solutions Our success stems partly from the diversity across the industries we serve. For example, we have many customers in the manufacturing, electronics, telecommunications, automotive, and research industries. But no single industry represents more than 10 percent of our revenue, and no customer amounts to more than three percent of our revenue. In 2000 we sold products to more than 24,000 companies around the world.

Low-Cost Solutions Customer-defined solutions built around the NI platform reduce the overall cost for our customers. Our integrated solutions deliver faster, more reliable systems that reduce development time, deployment costs, and maintenance costs. Reduced costs for manufacturers mean reduced costs for everyone.

High-Performance Solutions In the past 10 years, computer processing power has increased more than 2,000 percent. The hotter the race for the fastest processing speeds, the more our customers benefit. We bring the power of the computer to hundreds of thousands of engineers and scientists to increase the performance of their measurement and automation solutions. As computer power grows, the value of our technology increases.

Innovative Solutions Our user-defined tools inspire engineers and scientists to create thousands of innovative solutions - from conducting lab classes through the Internet to sharing data across a business to monitoring manufacturing floors around the globe.

Productive Solutions Our revolutionary solutions help companies meet critical time-to-market demands. By combining the latest commercial technologies with the evolution of our software and hardware, engineers and scientists realize substantial productivity gains. Our approach saves time and money for our customers by decreasing development time - which means they can count on getting their products to market faster.