Venture Development Corp. (VDC) today announced the recipients of its 2006 “Platinum and Gold” awards, which rate non-product characteristics of vendors of computer boards targeting companies building embedded systems and devices. Ten board vendors were awarded Platinum status, and twenty were awarded Gold status in this year's ratings.

The ratings are awarded annually, as part of VDC's annual “Global Market Analysis of Merchant Computer Boards for Embedded/Real-time Applications” research report. The report delves into the markets for “slot” style single-board computers, embedded motherboards, mezzanine cards, computer-on-modules (COMs), and PC/104 stackable modules, VDC said.

According to VDC, the Platinum and Gold board-vendor ratings are entirely based on user feedback, which is entered into an “impartial,” “proprietary” model. The process of generating the ratings was:

• Users identify their most important non-product vendor evaluation criteria
  • created from a list of over 45 selection criteria
  • included elements such as availability/delivery, price, reliable/long product life, and a variety of service and support factors
• Users identified 1-5 vendors from whom they had purchased merchant computer boards
• Vendors were rated on the same non-product criteria, on a scale of one to five

As part of this process, VDC produced a list of the top 15 “non-product selection criteria” that were most often selected by participants in the survey. These, according to VDC, were ranked as follows (1 = most selected):

1. Product Availability/Delivery
2. Price
3. Reliable, Long-Lived Products
4. Meets Delivery Schedules
5. Experience/Relationship with Vendor
6. Technical Support (General)
7. Supports an Industry Standard
8. Reputation
9. Pre-Sales Support
10. ISO 9000 Certification
11. 24 Hour, 7 Day Technical Support
12. Cutting-Edge Technology
13. Longevity in Business
14. On-Line Documentation
15. Brand Name

After generating the above list of priorities, VDC says, it “aggregated and appropriately weighted [this data] to reflect the relative importance of the various criteria, and a score was generated for each embedded vendor.” Vendors that scored in the top 5 percent were awarded “Platinum” status, and those that scored in the next highest 10 percent vendors received “Gold” status.

And the winners are…

Platinum awards went to 10 companies:

• Concurrent Technologies
• Diamond Systems
• Kontron
• LiPPERT Embedded Computers
• Measurement Computing
• Motorola Embedded Communications Computing
• Supermicro Computer
• Themis Computer
• VersaLogic
• WinSystems

And, 20 Gold ratings were awarded to:

• Advantech
• Applied Data Systems
• Arcom Control Systems
• Connect Tech
• Curtiss Wright Controls
• Digital-Logic
• Diversified Technologies
• GE Fanuc Embedded Systems
• General Standards
• Inova
• Intel EID
• JK Microsystems
• Mercury Computer Systems
• Microbus Group
• National Instruments
• Performance Technologies
• Portwell
• RTD Embedded Technologies
• Thales Computers
• Trenton Technologies

Further information on VDC's research report, “Merchant Computer Boards for Embedded/Real-time Applications: Global Market Analysis,” is available here.

 
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