Natick, MA — (press release excerpt) — market research firm Venture Development Corporation (VDC) today named Force Computers, Intel Corp, Motorola Computer Group, VersaLogic, and VMIC “Platinum Vendors” in the market for merchant computer boards in embedded and real-time applications. Additionally, “Gold Vendors” included board makers Advantech, American Predator Corporation, Ampro, Kontron, Mercury Computer Systems, National Instruments, RadiSys Corporation, Sabtech Industries, SBS Technologies, Themis Computers, and WinSystems.

These rankings comprise a new addition to VDC's market analysis of merchant computer boards, and were obtained through the use of an impartial model, proprietary to VDC. This model took into account such factors as breadth of product line, on-line resources, trade association membership, ISO certification, etc., as well as user perceptions.

Users were first asked, via on-line survey, to identify those non-product criteria which they considered most important in evaluating a vendor. These criteria often included elements such as availability and delivery, price, and a variety of service and support factors. They were then asked to name up to five vendors from whom they had purchased merchant computer boards, and rate each of these vendors on the same non-product criteria, on a scale of one to four. This data was then aggregated and appropriately weighted to reflect the relative importance of the various criteria, and combined with other data indicated above.

“Platinum” status was awarded to the 5% of VDC-identified vendors achieving the highest numerical value from the execution of the model. “Gold” status was awarded to the next 10% of these vendors. The following table lists the companies awarded “Platinum” and “Gold” status in the General category (including all board vendors).

The model was adjusted and executed separately and for different types of merchant computer boards in order to award “Platinum” and “Gold” status in the following categories:

• General (including all board vendors, seen above);
  
• CompactPCI (vendors of CompactPCI boards);
  
• PCI (vendors of PCI boards);
  
• VME (vendors of VME boards);
  
• Motherboards (vendors of active backplane motherboards); and
  
• PC/104 Family (vendors of PC/104 and PC/104-Plus CPU boards and expansion modules).

“Because the model was heavily weighted toward user perception of non-product vendor selection criteria, those achieving platinum or gold status may feel comfortable that their firms are highly regarded in these respects by their customers,” said Eric Gulliksen, Senior Analyst and Project Manager of Venture Development's Embedded Hardware Research Group. “Other vendors may wish to pay more attention to these factors.”

The additional platinum and gold rankings of vendors in the various standard bus architectures are featured in VDC's study of the 2001 global embedded merchant computer board market, or Volume II of the Year 2001-2002 Planning Service on Computers in Embedded and Real-Time Applications. This is part of a year-long planning service “Year 2001-2002 Planning Service on Computers in Embedded and Real-Time Applications”.

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