Avnet Embedded EMEA

Totally connected

Avnet Embedded EMEA offers customised hardware and software solutions including services to help clients at all stages of their technology lifecycle

Part of the multi-billion dollar turnover Avnet group, Avnet Embedded serves leading industrial equipment and device manufacturers who need to develop better and smarter devices for their end customers. The company is able to provide advice and technical support on every step of the journey from concept to production and by working in partnership with a wide range of world-class suppliers, it can advise on products and components to provide a fast and secure development path.

Brian Stack, Director of OEM Enterprise at Avnet Embedded EMEA added: “Avnet Embedded is uniquely placed within the Avnet organisation with access to offer the full portfolio for products from the Edge to the Enterprise to our OEM customers across the globe.”

Following the advice stage, Avnet Embedded has the capabilities to offer end-to-end services stretching all the way from concept to actualisation – this enables clients to focus on their core competencies at the same time as accelerating their time-to-market. A major part of this process is Avnet’s Integrated Services provision, which helps clients to grow their revenue by expanding their offerings and enhancing customer service. As an outsourcing partner, Avnet makes it easy for customers to provide services that go beyond the design and development of technology to include a wider range of offerings, including installation, troubleshooting, preventive maintenance, project management, technical training and managed services. In addition to expanding market reach, Avnet’s advanced services automatically level the playing field for a business when competing against larger market players with significant in-house capabilities. Whether clients require a single customised solution or a volume offering for thousands of customers, they can rely on Avnet to put its expertise, skills and resources to work to deliver the highest-quality solution – quickly, accurately and cost effectively.

The services give customers access to Avnet’s Global Solutions Centres (see graphic overleaf) – a facility that enables the Integration Services team to build and ship over 57,000 units annually and meet integration requests of any scope and scale quickly and effectively. With other benefits on offer including targeted project teams, proven best practices, a consultative approach, integrated supply chain management and quality assurance, it is obvious that Avnet’s Integrated Services enable clients to deliver more complete solutions to their customers while generating renewable revenue for their business.

The products available from Avnet Embedded fall into five categories: Computing, Displays, Server & Storage Solutions, Printers, Wireless & Embedded Software. There is an extraordinary range of products offered within these sectors, including panel PCs and motherboards, mono or touch displays and kiosk & ticketing printers to name just a few. Therefore, for clients looking to build dedicated or fixed function devices like kiosks, digital signage, POS/EPOS devices or intelligent industrial automation applications and so forth, Avnet Embedded can help develop faster, robust and secure solutions.

“Avnet Embedded serves customers who take their intellectual property to market, product launch & increasing profitability – ultimately, enhancing competitiveness. Our local support and global reach capabilities make us an ideal partner as we build and deploy complex, intelligent solutions for our partners across a myriad of key industries,” highlighted Brian.

The company is also highly experienced in embedded licensing for software, and is a wireless product expert, with a focus on the ‘Internet of Things’ phenomenon. The company is fully embracing this new ideal of total connectivity – in fact, in December 2015 Avnet Embedded France sponsored the Connected Devices Congress in Paris, an event from French publisher L’Usine Digitale.

At the event, Technical Director Nicolas Sebille presented a keynote session about ‘connected production facilities’ where he explained why Avnet Embedded is so keen to encourage manufacturers to adopt this new technology. “There’s a lot of talk about the Internet of Things (IoT) and connected cities or connected enterprises, but a lot less about connected production facilities. However, IoT has a strong role to play in this space, enabling the processing of data to deliver real customer benefits,” he said.

“In particular, optimising on-demand data collected from businesses’ industrial production facilities, we believe, is now an absolute necessity. Every networked industrial application, whatever its place in the hierarchy, must form a link in the company’s enterprise IoT strategy.

“The aggregation, extraction, processing and analysis of information from the production line commust be right at the heart of the drive to boost financial gain; through public and private Cloud solutions, as well as hybrid deployments.”

Nicolas also highlighted what Avnet Embedded can bring to the table for IoT. “Our part in it focuses on the business benefits of IoT, and how the right choice of Cloud-based solutions can deliver these benefits both to our existing clients and to many other industrial production sites, too.”

So not only can the company draw on the knowledge it has gained from listening to the market, but it can also offer practical advice to clients on how to simplify the integration of ‘wireless’ into their hardware, and it works with suppliers and labs to maximise the range or throughput of a finished device. Avnet Embedded also has a broad selection of boxed modems, routers and IoT gateways, as well as airtime partners, which makes it a one-stop-shop for the complete Edge to Enterprise solution.

Indeed, the end of March 2016 saw the release of a new IoT product, the EL-20 series, on behalf of Intel and Gigabyte. Described by the organisation as a ‘perfect IoT gateway solution’ the EL-20 was developed as a reference design for Intel’s Bear Ridge platform. It is a small form factor industrial computer with all the features and flexibility required to be gateway solution bridging unconnected legacy systems and aggregating their data output.

Featuring key benefits such as an Intel Pentium processor N3700, the EL-20 also has dual independent 4K display ports, a slim line, fanless design and energy-efficient 24/7 operations. It is designed as an entry-level industrial controller, and would be ideal for digital signage or access control and security applications.

With Intel predicting the global number of connected devices to grow to 50 billion by 2020 and Cisco estimating the value of IoT to reach $14.4 trillion over the next decade, it is clear that the potential of this phenomenon is almost without limit. Avnet Embedded is already ideally positioned to supply complete solutions with real-world applications in this area, and with its dedication to R&D and its finger on the pulse of what’s to come, the company is also ready to help its clients get ready for the future.

Avnet Embedded
Products: Distributor, integrator and manufacturer of complex embedded products, systems and solutions