2000 Annual Report

Leveraging Commercial Technologies Ever-advancing technologies, including computer, wireless technologies, and the Internet, fuel the Measurement Revolution. With rapid advances in computing technology driving the development of easy-to-use software and standardized off-the-shelf hardware components, more engineers are empowered to build complete systems than ever before. By building measurement systems using the latest commercial technologies, our customers reap the benefits of greater system performance and lower total system cost.

Computer Advantages In the past 15 years, the innovations surrounding the personal computer revolutionized the way engineers and scientists work. Continuous improvements in software and hardware have transformed the computer from a number crunching machine to an information resource, a design tool, a test system, or a deployed solution. Engineers and scientists save time with the computer, using our high-performance hardware to acquire measurement data, and our easy-to-use software to analyze information, log data, and generate reports - even send information to the Web - for production management. By taking advantage of every element of the computer, our solutions deliver more performance than traditional measurement systems in many applications. The enormous cost benefits and performance advantages of computer-based systems will drive the advances in measurement and automation for years to come.

The Internet Changes Everything The Internet and its estimated 25 million Web sites offer information and opportunities that did not exist a decade ago. The Internet and other types of computer networks are ushering in a new age of data sharing for engineers and scientists. By incorporating the power of the Internet into software and hardware products, we offer engineers and scientists the power to share their measurements with colleagues across the globe as easily as if they were in the same room. Just as the computer has influenced engineers during the past 15 years, the Internet now and in upcoming years will change their daily jobs throughout all areas of a company.

Productivity and Performance Gains With our revolutionary, industry-standard solutions, engineers and scientists increase their productivity and performance to meet critical time-to-market demands. As commercial technologies continue to evolve, becoming faster and cheaper, a measurement system that fully integrates these technologies becomes even more powerful. The phenomenal increase of processing speeds gives computer-based measurement systems a competitive advantage that other measurement systems cannot claim. Traditional instruments cannot take full advantage of the processing power or the enterprise-wide connectivity of today's personal computer. In test and measurement, a computer-based approach is responsible for downsizing automated test equipment (ATE) while providing up to 10 times the productivity at a fraction of the cost of traditional instrument solutions.