The path of transformation

Security aspects

Security aspects are often underestimated. How do you see that and which efforts are you undertaking to make your products secure?

Huang: There are three kinds of security aspects. One point is, to protect Software, like McAfee does. For example, if you want to upload a picture on Facebook, there is a software protection system that defends your picture against hackers. The second point is to provide an edge device with security. Intel has a Security platform called TPM for such cases. Number three is to protect data, which is sent from the cloud to the edge, so a customer can use it for analysis for example. So support the three steps: Software protection, Security platforms and Data protection. This is absolutely essential for our customers.

Your business report says that your biggest market is North America. What’s the reason for that and how do you perceive the other markets?

Huang: We are doing a very good job in North America – the reason why Advantech is so successful is that we have a very strong team over there. Our United States team is almost like a company in its own right, that shows that localisation is the only way we can be so successful.
We have our own factories in the USA, we have our own R&D team and we have a sales department. The benefit is: these are all local people. Another point is that we are focusing on Embedded Computing – we are not trying to promote other businesses in America.

Do you think you can transfer this concept to other markets like Europe?

Huang: In Europe we are also doing very well,  but we can always do better. Advantech is not a householname yet in Europe as it is in USA or Asia. We will increase the local brand-awareness in Europe in future and I think the teams are getting better and better, especially with Dirk Finstel as Associate Vice President & CTO for Embedded IoT in the lead. Our goal is to copy this from the USA, to implement the new branding and even improve the team.
On the other hand we will localise our business in Europe in the future as well. There are many languages and countries in Europe. We want to address the different markets in Europe with our new strategy and show the people that we are present, in their country, in their language. We also want to improve the local supply service, including all the logistics.

1. The path of transformation
2. Security aspects
3. Business perspective in Europe