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Today, with social media getting out
information so quickly, customers
need to have their products ready in
zero time, and Arrow, as a technology
provider, must be able to support
this need. To do that, Arrow is
moving toward solution-selling while
continuing to support the needs of
legacy customers, thereby supporting
customers no matter what step they
are at with their projects and no
matter what the request.
One example is for the IoT gateway
market, wherein many customers
need fast solutions but the options
are endless. The customer needs to
adopt a popular solution and change
it to fit their end application. Let’s
use a success story that we had with
a customer that got a very popular
community board from Arrow called
DragonBoard 410c. The DragonBoard
410c is the first development board
based on a Qualcomm Snapdragon
also has ready-to-use industrial
boards that are similar. In this case,
the DB4 from Geniatech is the
industrial version of the DragonBoard
410c that also includes Ethernet,
different and more popular power
connectors, and other features not
included on the community board.
With this board, the customer was
able to add only a case and, in two
months, release the first working
prototype to their end customers.
But the story doesn’t end there.
Because of this fast time to market,
Arrow was requested to support
the same solution but add another
Ethernet port for Power over Ethernet
(PoE). This needed to also come in
a “box/case” form factor but could
quickly increase to large quantities.
Typically, when doing business, a
distributor will tell the customer that
they need to do this by themselves,
but as a technology provider, Arrow
From Development Board to Production Solution
in Zero Time
Amir Sherman, Director of Engineering Solutions & Embedded Technology, EMEA, at Arrow Electronics
400 series processor. It features
advanced processing power, Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth connectivity, and GPS,
all packed into a board the size of
a credit card. Based on the 64-bit–
capable Snapdragon 410E processor,
the DragonBoard 410c is designed to
support rapid software development,
education, and prototyping and
is compliant with the 96Boards
Consumer Edition specification from
www.96boards.org.
After only two months, the customer
realizes that they will NOT be able
to develop a full IoT gateway-
even though he had all of the
documentation, software, and
firmware—because of his request for
time to market, so they have to ask
for an industrial version of this board.
Normally, this is not a popular
solution because many suppliers are
developing reference boards and
development boards only, but Arrow
28 l New-Tech Magazine Europe