Bridging the Frontier 
Bob Smith, Executive Director
Bob Smith is Executive Director of the ESD Alliance responsible for its management and operations. Previously, Bob was senior vice president of Marketing and Business Development at Uniquify, responsible for brand development, positioning, strategy and business development activities. Bob began his … More » Now’s a Great Time to Join the ESD Alliance!August 7th, 2017 by Bob Smith, Executive Director
The ESD Alliance isn’t only about networking and educational events. In fact, we have quite a few largely unheralded programs that our members consider of great value. We break them into five additional categories –– market information, risk management, growth and efficiency, emerging companies and industry voice. For example, the Market Statistics Service (MSS) is a mainstay among them and is part of the market information category. Quarterly revenue data is collected from contributing companies and aggregated by an outside accounting firm to ensure no individual company data is disclosed. Members receive a quarterly report with excellent, up-to-date information and trends for determining total available market and so much more. The driver of this 20-year program is Wally Rhines from Mentor, a Siemens Business, which should give you a hint to its importance and relevance. In more ways than I can count, the Export Committee is an effective and invaluable resource to member companies for risk management and avoidance. It represents all of them with a unified voice in Washington, D.C., on export licensing and compliance issues. I recently blogged about the help it gave to two new members Helic (http://bit.ly/2vesFGT) and SoC Solutions, now Silvaco (http://bit.ly/2fmvcuJ).
One area that we don’t widely promote is our involvement with the National Defense University (NDU). File that under education. Paul Cohen, member of the technical staff, and Larry Disenhof, group director of Export Compliance and Government Relations at Cadence and chair of the Export Committee, educate students going through NDU on the value of the semiconductor industry. Among their efforts, Larry and Paul host and organize an annual visit by the students to Silicon Valley, all-the-while delivering value to member companies by educating future leaders in the U.S. government. Another important aspect of risk management the Alliance addresses is license management and anti-piracy with a charter to work on technologies and best practices to help honest customers operate within their license agreements. Current efforts are focused on an industry solution to manage licensing in the presence of virtual servers and host-id duplication. The anti-piracy component looks at products and algorithms to hinder theft of member companies’ software and IP. As you might expect, the result in savings from losses due to theft is substantial and improves ROI on the R&D investment. An IP Fingerprinting Methodology Working Group under the risk management category is developing a common methodology and best practices for fingerprinting for an end-to-end solution to track and audit soft and hard semiconductor IP. The benefits to IP users and vendors are tangible and deliver risk reduction through automated IP audit capabilities and improved license adherence and revenue. The O/S Interoperability Committee publishes a recommended platform support roadmap for all member companies and sets expectations with customers for supported platforms. The value of this growth and efficiency committee is a reduction of member company resources and costs to develop and support a wider range of platforms. The ESD Alliance is the voice of the design ecosystem –– your company’s voice –– to promote the importance of the electronic design ecosystem to the semiconductor and electronic manufacturing segments. It’s a big responsibility that means regular communications to the industry at large. As the executive director, it’s my job to keep our corner of the industry visible and I do that through blog posts like this one and opinion pieces. We regularly turn out news releases about our programs, new members and other topical information. And, you will see us at many industry conferences and other events. If all of this wasn’t enough … In addition to all of these benefits, ESD Alliance members receive a 10% discount on DAC booth space. Increased membership, networking opportunities, events and education, risk management, growth and efficiency, market information, emerging companies, industry voice, DAC discount, all great reasons for your company to join the ESD Alliance. And, we’re working behind the scenes on a few more. If your company would like to join the ESD Alliance, please visit the ESD Alliance website to read about these active committees and our other ongoing initiatives. Or, contact me for more specifics on ROI or other justifications for joining. I can be reached at bob@esd-alliance.org We look forward to seeing your company name on our membership roster, and you and your colleagues at our fall events. Follow us at: Website: www.esd-alliance.org ESD Alliance Bridging the Frontier blog: http://bit.ly/2oJUVzl Twitter: @ESDAlliance LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8424092 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ESDAlliance |
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