Aktuel Elektronik: GPower Is Much More than LabVIEW Architects [Article]

Based on our latest stories, we have reached the front page in the seventh edition of Aktuel Elektronik, a Danish electronics magazine! Read the article here, where you will also find a link to the original article! Please note that the original article is written in Danish.

With the appointment of three new employees and the establishment of a new office just before the turn of the year, GPower has make for a new direction that will also involve proprietary products and solutions in the long term.

 

For a long time, GPower has been recognized as one of the most valuable partners for National Instruments in Denmark where GPower’s founder, Steen Schmidt, has developed a number of exciting metrological solutions for the wind turbine sector among others. These solutions have typically been based on NI’s LabVIEW software and data collection modules from the same company. However, over time, GPower has increased the ambitions.

– When I became a part of the company, the purpose was to release Steen Schmidt’s resources into new and exciting product development, so I could take care of the administrative part. GPower has potential for much more than existing range of products, but of course it requires a strategy that combines the existing strengths with projects that can provide training for the company’s technical experts. And then there must be room for new employees, says Martin Boje who became CEO at GPower last year.

Room for expansion is also the reason that GPower moved to new premises around the turn of the year. At present, the company has grown to be 10 employees, but there is room for even more as the premises allow us to expand to 26 men. In addition, GPower has also better laboratory facilities as well as an associated warehouse, which can be very important as the company develops its series of products.

Several Projects Justify More Employees

From 1 May 2018, two new employees have joined the GPower team. The increasing number of projects in different industries and the ongoing development of the company’s modular software requires more system developers for GPower’s development team. This means, among other things, that the company has employed Jeppe Lohse as a new system developer for development projects. Jeppe Lohse is, however, not the only new employee who started 1 May. GPower has also employed an experienced project manager for project management of existing and future projects by the name of Michael Prisskov Lundsgaard. Michael has, among other things, more than 10 years of project management experience regarding software and hardware projects.

– Our expectations for the future are that we will build on our modular software in parallel with external projects, so we can make quality instruments available for even more companies. In this regard, we also look forward to launching our product sales pages in a few months as the pages will help to support our future focus on project sales as well as product sales, says Martin Boje.

Away from Hourly Paid Consultancy

So saying, GPower is now far beyond the previous image as “LabVIEW Architects”. The company will no longer serve as hourly paid consultants. It is undoubtedly a good and a safe business model, but it is not very prescient. Instead, GPower will, in parallel with a number of customer tasks, develop its own prototypes and products that can give GPower a proprietary program with the possibility of customization, so they will be able to deliver complete and quick solutions for their customers – more or less based on own designs and algorithms.

– Steen Schmidt has described a lot of add-ons for NI’s products, including modular superstructures for the CompactRIO platform. This is an excellent model as a project in fact can be up to 80 percent finished from the beginning of the design, and it will make “affordable” a keyword in relation to specific projects. Furthermore, it will make it possible for small and medium-sized businesses buying design and development for a merciful price, says Martin Boje.

GPower has also initiated a strategic partnership with NI to commit NI’s modular hardware platform with GPower’s modular software platform. In the long term, this will result in new “standard products” that will undoubtedly benefit more customers. With regard to hardware, Steen Schmidt imagines a matrix moving from boards in the size of a credit card to RIO solutions, while the functional axis will consist of data collection, signal generation and a combination of both of them in the high-end solutions. However, it is a model that can be adjusted along the way. But the way to finished products has become shorter for customers – whether the starting point is a LabVIEW application or a totally different solution.

Share:

LinkedIn
Facebook
Email
#blog

Previous Posts