I recently talked with Joachim Huepper, marketing manager of Renesas' CID business unit, about the matter. He explained: "In certain sectors, such as automotive, there are a relatively small number of firms, this makes it easy for us to engage with them. However, when it comes to the industrial space, there are quite literally thousands of different firms, all with very specific needs. It is clearly very hard to provide the support we would like to all of them, but by collaborating with a network of partners we can facilitate the development of outstanding embedded solutions with fast time-to-market."Alliance partners include independent consultants and design houses, manufacturing services, third-party tool developers, and programming houses. The benefit to the customer base is quicker access to a selection of the services and knowledge base they require. Each customer can select partners who already have the development tools that best suit their needs. The risk for customers is minimised as Renesas verifies all entries before allowing them to join. Likewise the partners gain a greater breadth of opportunity for specialist training and exclusive access to privileged information such as product roadmaps and chip/tool development status. The programme offers three levels of partnership. These are standard partners, gold partners and platinum partners. Two of the requirements for gold status are that the company must have engineers holding five or more Renesas product certifications and must have contributed to the completion of a product design that has gone into production. The platinum elite are premium partners who have achieved significant success in serving customers who develop embedded systems using Renesas devices; membership of this rank is by invitation only.
One of the earliest European firms to join the programme is Proven Software Solutions. Located in Maidstone, (south-east England), this independent broker for proven embedded software aims to enable OEMs and ODMs to maximise their investment and resources, while reducing their risk - and development costs - by the reuse of embedded software. Director Philip Ling, who was formerly deputy editor of the UK-based magazine New Electronics, founded the firm in the early stages of 2006 (proving that some members of the electronics-trade press are good for something). With regard to the collaboration with Renesas, he comments: "This is unlike other partner programmes in the industry, because it not only acknowledges how important embedded-software development has become in the overall system design, but is proactively putting in place the partnerships needed to address it. We were invited to join at the platinum partner level in order to grow an ecosystem of embedded software for reuse, because of the benefits it offers in terms of time-to-market, R&D expenditure and risk. As the ecosystem of available software grows, Renesas customers will gain a significant competitive advantage over using alternative microcontroller architectures."
Embedded-design specialist Emtrion sees the partner programme as a reflection of Renesas' commitment to the MCU market. Based in Karlsruhe (Germany), it produces embedded modules and starter kits for use in a number of different application areas, including automation engineering, industrial control, and Test and Measurement. The company's account manager, Thomas Ruf, said: "The programme aligns with our own philosophy of establishing partner networks that enable us to keep one step ahead of our competitors. Renesas is one of our top partners, providing us with high-performance microcontrollers featuring low-power consumption. The long-term security of supply it guarantees is very important in our industrial projects and makes the whole team motivated to win new designs architectured around the SH processor family."Applying to become a partner is easy to do. It is just a matter of registering a company profile and highlighting the expertise in certain technologies and applications that your firm can offer. This can be done directly through the Renesas European website at www.renesas.eu.
