Interview with Daniel Walls of Aegis Software (Europe)

Aegis has recently moved its European headquarters to High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK due to its reaffirmed long-term commitment to the European Electronic Manufacturing Industry. evertiq: What are your plans for Europe and how do you like to implement these plans? Daniel Walls: For the past year, Aegis has been targeting the UK and Benelux areas of Europe. Currently we have been extremely successful in these areas and have scaled our organization internally to meet those demands. In the next year, Aegis will continue to expand into other European areas, with specific concentration on the German market. evertiq: Aegis technology is used in over 1000 factory sites worldwide. How many of your customers are located in Europe and in which industries? Daniel Walls: 20% of those customers are in Europe Medical Device Manufacturers: 4 of the top 10 Defence Manufacturers: 8 of the top 15 Major Contract Manufacturers: 3 of the top 10 evertiq: For which industries or applications are your products especially important? Daniel Walls: I do not believe there is one “typical" profile that suits Aegis at this time. Our system is very modular and cost effective to meet a wide range of electronics companies in Europe. We have customers that are four person operations that do a tremendous amount of new product introduction work to supplying four of the top ten medical device manufacturers with MES solutions. The important idea to recognize is that Aegis solutions can grow with our customer growth. evertiq: Why should an electronics manufacturer use products from Aegis? How does it benefit from your products? Daniel Walls: Aegis Service and Satisfaction Reputation: Seven consecutive years of industry customer satisfaction awards based on independent surveys of Aegis' and its competitors' customers. Aegis Technical Leadership: Aegis was first to 32 bit, OLE, CAMX, and remains the only vendor offering an XML web service, .NET system on one database. Others speak of advanced and integrated systems, but only Aegis can back up that claim. Aegis Connection to Your Factory: Aegis maintains more partnerships with the leading machine vendors than any other supplier by a ratio of about 10:1. These assure our customers of unprecedented program generation capability as well as machine monitoring. Quality: Aegis sells only what it develops in-house. Aegis does not subcontract or acquire technology. Therefore, we can evolve, integrate, and support what we sell. This cannot be claimed by any Aegis competitor. Fulfilled Commitments: Aegis has kept its promises and maintained timely product releases. In a market of unfulfilled "roadmaps" and "visions", Aegis has delivered a consistently evolving, powerful system. evertiq: What is your strategy to establish and ensure close customer relationship to your European customers? Daniel Walls: The Company has complete support for Europe through a series of VARs and representatives. As an internal policy, Aegis has chosen to directly support our more sophisticated MES systems that have been deployed. Software is only as good as the company that supports it. The interview was performed by Herbert Hoenle, Editor www.evertiq.de.