Make labview everywhere a reality

[falkpl]

I have used labview for a long time and avid user.  One issue I have been hitting lately is the "LabVIEW everywhere" slogan never really panned out, it has become LabVIEW everywhere NI allows it to be.  I am getting jealous of the Arduino and Rasberry Pi and hundreds of PICS and ARMs not avaliable to me (Yes I have the pro liscence but not embedded).  I wish Labview pro opened up the toolchain and started porting to many other platforms by default.  I am seeing jobs that labview is loosing ot to where it should be much more competetive like the embedded market. 

Essentially I am looking to see the Labview development environment easily work with toolchains for the most popular processors and also open up a simple standard to add targets to projects. 

Wouldnt it be nice to program a $25 ardunio dirrectly from labview (NO THIS IS NOT WHAT THE TOOLKIT IS DOING).  Add a Ardunio target file (maps the io memory to variables and throw down a loop, boolean shift register, a wait and a digital line variable, download to the micro and the blink led example is done.  Really open up the doors for LabVIEW everywhere.

[vitoi]

josborne, my thoughts exactly. Where’s the innovation. With something like 1,000 R&D engineers, you’d think we would have gotten more innovation over the past 10 years.

To me, the last pieces of true innovation from National Instruments / LabVIEW were:

1)    LabVIEW’s Event Structure

2)    compactRIO (and its new packaging known as sbRIO)

3)    LabVIEW Embedded for microcontrollers (since allowed to lapse)

These all occurred about 10 years ago. Since then no innovation. What are those 1,000 souls busy doing?

Give me just 5% of the R&D headcount and I’ll get the following done in 2 years:

1)    A cost effective OEM friendly sbRIO board ( http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-FPGA-Idea-Exchange/Smaller-and-cheaper-sbRIO-based-on-Xilinx-Zynq/id... )

2)    LabVIEW Embedded running efficiently on LM3S9B96 development board, BeagleBoard and Arduino Due (and a new popular contemporary powerful open-hardware development board every 2 years)

3)    The ability to use a standard web browser as a user interface for LabVIEW (without any plug ins)

In the long-term, these changes will increase NI’s revenue (and share price).

The main problems facing NI are that LabVIEW is a mature product and promoting LabVIEW Embedded for ARM or low cost sbRIO boards would rob sales from high margin sbRIO and cRIO products.

Let’s take a leaf from Apple’s book. When the iPad was introduced about 2 years ago, Apple did not know if there was a large market for such a device. Did Apply say, “Let’s not sell iPads since it will rob sales from laptops”? No. They had the courage to embrace innovation. The end result is a great new money spinner and finally a way to sell more iMacs. You see the way to sell more iMacs was not to make it better, but to introduce more people to the Apple brand through iPods and iPads. The so-called halo effect. National Instruments would sell many more LabVIEW licenses and increase overall revenue and earnings if it introduce a better sbRIO board, fully developed LabVIEW Embedded for ARM, added a web browser (without plug ins) interface to LabVIEW and the ideas presented at http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/LabVIEW-as-one-of-the-Top-20-software-development-envi...

National Instruments may be thinking that I wish them harm. Nothing could be further from the truth. National Instruments and its customers are in a symbiotic relationship. We use proprietary single sourced products. This makes us vulnerable. (An unkind Unix/C embedded programmer at the company I work for called it a host/parasite relationship.) We want NI to succeed. We either both succeed or both fail. We want to see the LabVIEW user base expand four fold in the near term and ten times in the medium term. We want to see NI grow from a company with a market capitalisation of $3 billion (and heading south) to one of $10 billion.

The way to do this is provide customers with what they want. Give customers what they want and the profits will come.

[vitoi]

Congratulations falkpl, 100 kudos! And in under 2 months (with a small post with no graphics).

Considering the maximum number of kudos is 564 (after 2 years), it’s quite an achievement and shows the strong customer interest in LabVIEW Everywhere. Hopefully National Instruments will resume the strategy.

Your idea has certainly achieved a lot of comments and may well get to several hundred kudos in time. It certainly is my favourite idea on the LabVIEW ideas Exchange. It’s also generated a lot of discussion on info-LabVIEW (the longest running thread that I can recall).

[falkpl]

Yes it is nice to see that there is interest to think out of the box (literally) for LV. I really think opening up to ARM standard with LV would solve many problems. ARM like it or not is huge and is becoming a standard development platform. NI Please make my life easy and get good standard integration at least with several ARM platforms. LabVIEW should also be a learning platform and learning ARM and embedded through labview would be helpful to many of our careers.

[MarkCG]

Hear hear! Falkpl and vitoi are spot-on. Ni is/will miss out on the mobile / embedded markets. Perhaps the recent lack of innovation and leadership in these areas is due to the "MBA" or "next quarter profits" type of mindset that many large successful companies settle into. Squeeze as much profit out of existing product lines as possible without thinking about the big picture. With so many free IDEs compilers and open source hardware, closed sourced has to be able to demonstrate that it still offers better value / productivity than these options. In business , it's not " what have you done for me" but "what can you do for me NOW".

[falkpl]

Again I am for NI making as much money and being successful as possible but I don't think ARM support would cost them anything and gain them much in the long run.

Link open source or inexpensive compilers (mikore.com has a full IDE for $299 that supports over 300 target ARM ICs, never used it but I have to look for options where LV doesnt fit), make an easy tool for defining targets (maybe add the most popular 50-100 arm processors and keep adding as time goes on).  Get rid of the embedded package, I would imagine that there are 1000x more labview purchases than embedded addon and just tack $5 to the labview package so there is no loss in revenue for NI.  NI can make stand alone boards like the PI or Ardunio with a strong focus on DAQ and high LV integration.  Yes they would be more expensive (even at 10x the cost of Pi we are only looking at 350), this complements the SRIO with no FPGA but lower costs and lower power (battery operation).  Making the devices compatable with standard shields would be a great bonus.  I am ready to compete with the embedded C market with yoyur help.  Maybe we can convert a few C gurus in the process.

Build it and they will come-  the Labview field of dreams.

[vitoi]

I read an article in today’s newspaper which made me think (again) about National Instruments’ marketing strategy towards LabVIEW Everywhere. The critics say that NI’s profits would suffer, however I believe they would soar. My mantra has been, “give customers what they want and the profits will come”.

Today’s newspaper article is about Apple, one of my favourite companies. I have an iMac (or two), an iPhone and an iPad, so you can see that I am a fan. What I’ve liked about Apple is that they do put the customer first and profits second. I get the impression that NI puts profits first and customers second.

Here’s the newspaper article and if you can believe Jonathan Ive (Apple’s senior VP of industrial design), Apple do put the customer first (and I maintain this is the “secret” to their success).

Apple might be the world's most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalisation of $US556 billion, but its design chief insists it is not in business for the money.

Sir Jonathan Ive, the man credited with shaping the iPad and iPhone and whose personal fortune is estimated at $130 million, said yesterday that Apple's guiding principal was nothing to do with its balance sheet, instead it simply wanted to make "great products".

Our goal isn't to make money. Our goal absolutely at Apple is not to make money. This may sound a little flippant, but it's the truth," the British designer said in London. "Our goal and what gets us excited is to try to make great products. We trust that if we are successful people will like them, and if we are operationally competent we will make revenue, but we are very clear about our goal."

"You would have thought that, when what stands between you and bankruptcy is some money, your focus would be on making some money, but that was not [Steve Jobs'] preoccupation. His observation was that the products weren't good enough and his resolve was, we need to make better products.

That stood in stark contrast to the previous attempts to turn the company around."

Apple is highly disciplined in "saying no" to products that are "competent" as opposed to "great", he said.

[vitoi]

falkpl, you said something that I read before, but didn't appreciate. It was "Get rid of the embedded package, I would imagine that there are 1000x more labview purchases than embedded addon and just tack $5 to the labview package so there is no loss in revenue for NI". This is an amazing concept that NI should seriously look at. It could be the single best thing for National Instruments' profit and LabVIEW users' satisfaction. BTW, my guesstimate is that there are 10,000x more LabVIEW (desktop) purchases than LabVIEW Embedded for ARM purchases (outside academia).

Let's explore what you said further:

1) Scrap LabVIEW Embedded for ARM

2) Include it as part of standard LabVIEW

3) Increase the price of LabVIEW by the amount of lost revenue - $5 or so.

Magic. For very little extra cost, we can program the desktop and microcontrollers. LabVIEW sales will surely increase.

However, I want to take it one step further. As LabVIEW sales increase, reduce the price of LabVIEW by 90% of the increased revenue (compared to projections without LabVIEW Embedded for ARM). NI still make an extra 10% than previous revenue projections, so everyone is a winner.

Once the price of LabVIEW drops from $4499 to $1500, share the increased LabVIEW sales revenue 50% between NI profits and continued LabVIEW price reduction.

The concept can be extended to various generally useful toolkits that have low sales volume, but would increase the appeal of LabVIEW (=many more users). The Internet Toolkit and Report Generator for Microsoft Office could be folded in and the price goes up by lost revenue. More features in LabVIEW --> more sales --> lower prices --> more sales.

Revenue would increase faster than would otherwise be the case and we get a much more capable LabVIEW at a lower price. With the right strategy, LabVIEW licenses would increase by at least four times. Let's say, for arguments sake, that there are currently 350,000 LabVIEW licenses (which, by the way is a minuscule less than 2% of the number of software developers in the world). Assuming everyone is on the SSP (15% of sale price) and new LabVIEW sales of 10% of existing users 350,000 x 0.15 x $4499 + 350,000 x 0.1 x $4499 = $393.7m current revenue. In the future, with four times as many users and a $1,500 LabVIEW price 1,400,000 x 0.15 x $1500 + 1,400,000 x 0.1 x $1500 = $525m revenue. NI makes 33% more revenue and users get a more feature packed LabVIEW, with a larger support community and lower cost. Everyone's a winner.

Sure, play around with the input variables to make sure it's revenue positive, but as little as possible until we get to 4 times LabVIEW users and $1500 sale price. Once there all additional sales could go straight to revenue.

Anyone from NI marketing reading this?

[falkpl]

Was at NI week 2012 and didn't see much progress here. 

Stopped by the TI booth and saw some very nice ARM M3 and M4F boards "Running Labview".  But not really, labview communicating with firmware on these boards via VISA nothing new.  Still believing in a market for true labview embedded.  NI can even make the hardware with an open market for high volume boards from third party, maybe some day.  I want NI to put their leading experience with simple software and easy DAQ solidly into the embedded market.

[vitoi]

falkpl, I took the liberty of posting your idea http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Increase-the-Price-of-LabVIEW-by-2/idi-p/2144730 

[vitoi]

Better get a move on NI! Others are doing what you should be doing http://www.toolsforsmartminds.com/products/data_everywhere.php .

If NI doesn't get a move on real soon (before the end of 2012 with an announcement) other offerings will be attracting users (and NI customers)!