National Instruments, or
NI , is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
company with over 5,000 employees and direct operations in 41 countries. Headquartered in
Austin, TexasAustin is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 15th-largest in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in the nation...
, it is a producer of automated test equipment and
virtual instrumentationVirtual instrumentation is the use of customizable software and modular measurement hardware to create user-defined measurement systems, called virtual instruments....
software. Their software products include
LabVIEWLabVIEW is a platform and development environment for a visual programming language from National Instruments.The graphical language is named "G"...
, a graphical development environment,
LabWindows/CVILabWindows/CVI is an event-driven, ANSI C programming environment developed by National Instruments. The program was originally released as LabWindows for DOS in 1987, but was soon reinvisioned for the Microsoft Windows platform...
, which provides VI tools for
CC is a general-purpose computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
, TestStand, a test sequencing and management environment, and
MultisimNI Multisim or formerly MultiSIM is an electronic Schematic Capture and simulation program which is part of a suite of circuit design programs, along with NI Ultiboard. Multisim is one of the few circuit design programs to employ the original Berkeley SPICE based software simulation...
(formerly
Electronics WorkbenchThe National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group is responsible for innovating the electronic circuit design software NI Multisim and NI Ultiboard, which was previously a Canada-based company that first produced MultiSIM, and integrated ULTIboard with it....
), an electrical circuit analysis program. Their hardware products include
VXIThe VXI bus architecture is an open standard platform for automated test based upon VMEbus. VXI stands for VME eXtensions for Instrumentation, defining additional bus lines for timing and triggering as well as mechanical requirements and standard protocols for configuration, message-based...
,
VMEbusVMEbus is a computer bus standard, originally developed for the Motorola 68000 line of CPUs, but later widely used for many applications and standardized by the IEC as ANSI/IEEE 1014-1987. It is physically based on Eurocard sizes, mechanicals and connectors , but uses its own signalling system,...
, and
PXIPCI eXtensions for Instrumentation is one of several modular electronic instrumentation platforms in current use. These platforms are used as a basis for building electronic test equipment or automation systems, such as might be used in a mobile phone manufacturing test environment...
frames and modules, as well as interfaces for
GPIBIEEE-488 is a short-range, digital communications bus specification that has been in use for over 30 years. Originally created for use with automated test equipment, the standard is still in wide use for that purpose...
,
I²CI²C is a multi-master serial computer bus invented by Philips that is used to attach low-speed peripherals to a motherboard, embedded system, or cellphone. The name is pronounced eye-squared-see or eye-two-see. Since the mid 1990s several competitors I²C (Inter-Integrated Circuit) is a...
, and other
industrial automationAutomation is the use of control systems , in concert with other applications of information technology , to control industrial machinery and processes, reducing the need for human intervention...
standards. They also sell real-time embedded controllers, including Compact FieldPoint and CompactRIO. Common applications include
data acquisitionIn computer data processing, data acquisition is the sampling of real world physical conditions and conversion of the resulting samples into digital numeric values that can be manipulated by a computer...
,
instrument controlInstrument control consists of connecting a desktop instrument to a computer and taking measurements.-History:In the late 1960s the first bus used for communication was developed by Hewlett-Packard and was called HP-IB...
and
machine visionMachine vision is the application of computer vision to industry and manufacturing. Whereas computer vision is the general discipline of making computers see , machine vision, being an engineering discipline, is interested in digital input/output devices and computer networks to control other...
.
In 2006, the company sold products to more than 25,000 companies in 90 countries with revenues of $660 million. For ten consecutive years since 2000,
FortuneFortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc.'s Fortune|Money Group. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner...
magazine named National Instruments one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.
Founding
In the early 1970s, three young men,
James TruchardDr. James Joseph Truchard is the co-founder and current president and CEO of National Instruments, a company producing automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software...
, Jeff Kodosky, and Bill Nowlin, were working at the
University of Texas at AustinThe University of Texas at Austin is a public research university located in Austin, Texas, United States, and is the flagship institution of The University of Texas System. The main campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol...
Applied Research Laboratories. As part of a project conducting research for the U.S. Navy, the men were using early computer technology to collect and analyze data. Frustrated with the inefficient data collection methods they were using, the three decided to create a product that would enable their task to be done more easily. In 1976, working in the garage at Truchard's home, the three founded a new company.
The men attempted to incorporate under several names, including Longhorn Instruments and Texas Digital, but all were rejected. Finally, they settled on the current name of National Instruments.
With a $10,000 loan from Interfirst Bank, the group bought a
PDP-11/04The PDP-11 was a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corp. from 1970 into the 1990s. Though not explicitly conceived as successor to DEC's PDP-8 computer in the PDP series of computers , the PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many real-time applications...
microcomputer and, for their first project, designed and built a GPIB interface for it. Their first sale was the result of a cold call to
Kelly Air Force BaseKelly Field Annex is a United States Air Force facility located in San Antonio, Texas. In 2001, the runway and land west of the runway became "Kelly Field Annex" and control of it was transferred to the adjacent Lackland Air Force Base.Kelly Air Force Base was closed and its assets realigned by...
in
San Antonio, TexasSan Antonio is the second-largest city in the state of Texas and the seventh-largest city in the United States. The city is characteristic of other Southwest urban centers in which there are sparsely populated areas and a low density rate outside of the city. It was the fourth-fastest growing...
. Because the trio were still employed by the University of Texas, in 1977 they hired their first full-time employee, Kim Harrison-Hosen, who handled orders, billing, and customer inquiries. By the end of the year they had sold three boards, and, to attract more business, the company produced and sent a mailer to 15,000 users of the PDP-11 microcomputer. As sales increased, they were able to move into a real office space in 1978, occupying a office at 9513 Burnet Road in Austin.
1980s
At the end of the 1970s, the company booked $400,000 in orders, recording a $60,000 profit. In 1980 Truchard, Kodosky, and Nowlin quit their jobs to devote themselves full-time to National Instruments, and at the end of the year moved the company to a larger office, renting of office space. To assist in generating revenue, the company undertook numerous special projects, working on a fuel-pump credit-card system and a waveform generator for I.S. Navy sonar acoustic testing. By 1981, the company reached the $1 million sales mark, leading them to move to a office in 1982.
In 1983 National Instruments reached an organizational milestone, developing their first GPIB board to connect instruments to IBM PCs. With the arrival of the Macintosh computer, however, the company felt ready to take advantage of the new graphical interfaces. Kodosky began a research initiative with the assistance of student researchers at the University of Texas into ways to exploit the new interface. This led to the creation of NI's flagship product, the
LabVIEWLabVIEW is a platform and development environment for a visual programming language from National Instruments.The graphical language is named "G"...
graphical development platform for the Macintosh computer, which was released in 1986. The software allows engineers and scientists to program graphically, by "wiring" icons together instead of typing text-based code. By allowing people to use a more intuitive, less-structured development environment, their productivity greatly increased, making LabVIEW quite popular. The following year, a version of LabVIEW, known as LabWindows, was released for the DOS environment.
The company counted 100 employees by 1986. To keep their employees happy, the founders used the motto "Work hard, and then let's have some fun." Employee achievements, no matter how small, were celebrated, and the company hosted various social gatherings for their employees both during and after working hours. This philosophy of celebrating their employees and playing hard is one the company would retain through its growth.
As part of the company's decision to begin direct sales of its products rather than representative distribution, in 1987 the company opened its first international branch, in Tokyo, Japan. To engage all of their employees, NI began holding all-hands gatherings at headquarters to communicate key messages to their employees and motivate them to excel.
1990s
After growing their staff enough to take over almost the entire building they were renting, in 1990 NI moved to a new building at 6504 Bridge Point Parkway, which the company purchased in 1991. The building, located along
Lake AustinLake Austin is a reservoir on the Colorado River in Austin, Texas in the United States. The reservoir was formed in 1939 by the construction of Tom Miller Dam by the Lower Colorado River Authority....
near the Loop 360 Bridge, became known as "Silicon Hills = Bridge Point."
NI received their first patent for LabVIEW in 1991. Later that year, they introduced Signal Conditioning eXtensions for Instrumentation (SCXI) to expand the signal-processing capabilities of the PC, and, in 1992, LabVIEW was first released for Windows-based PCs and Unix workstations. To further assist their customers, NI also created the National Instruments Alliance Partner program, attracting a worldwide selection of third-party developers, systems integrators, and consultants who could extend the capabilities of the NI hardware and software.
With LabVIEW now available to a much larger audience, in 1993 the company reached the milestone of $100 million in annual sales. To attract C/C++ programmers, later that year NI introduced
LabWindows/CVILabWindows/CVI is an event-driven, ANSI C programming environment developed by National Instruments. The program was originally released as LabWindows for DOS in 1987, but was soon reinvisioned for the Microsoft Windows platform...
. The following year an industrious employee began experiments with the relatively new world wide web and developed natinst.com, the company's very first web page. As the company continued to grow, they began to run out of room in their approximately campus. In 1994, NI broke ground on a new campus, located at a 72 acre site along North Mopac boulevard in northern Austin. By this time, NI had reached 1000 employees.
The new NI campus, which opened in 1998, was designed to be employee-friendly. It contains dedicated "play" areas, including basketball and volleyball courts, an employee gym, and a campus-wide walking trail. Each of the buildings on the campus are lined with windows and feature an open floor plan, so that the employees seated in cubicles throughout the building are never far from the sun and views of northwest Austin. To maintain the focus on equality among the employees, even "Dr. T", as the employees call their CEO, sits in an open cubicle and does not have an assigned parking space.
Employees had been granted stock in the privately-held company as part of their compensation packages. When the company chose to go public in 1995, over 300 current and former employees owned stock. The company is now listed on the
NASDAQThe National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, known as NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. It is the largest electronic screen-based equity securities trading market in the United States...
exchange as NATI. The initial public offering went well, and although many of the stock-holding employees were suddenly wealthy enough to retire, most of them chose to remain with the company, and many still work there a decade later.
By the late 1990s, customers had begun using LabVIEW in industrial automation applications. With LabVIEW and the more advanced DAQ boards provided by the company, engineers could now replace expensive, fixed-function, vendor-defined instruments with a custom PC-based system that would acquire, analyze, and present data with added flexibility and a lower cost. With the company's acquisition of Georgetown Systems Lookout software, NI products were further incorporated into applications run on the factory-floor. By 1996, the company had reached $200 million in annual sales, and was named to Forbes magazine's 200 Best Small Companies list.
Over the next several years, the engineers at NI continued to stretch the boundaries of virtual instrumentation, releasing machine vision software and hardware, which allow cameras to act as sensors, and motion control hardware and software. NI also introduced the CompactPCI-based
PXIPCI eXtensions for Instrumentation is one of several modular electronic instrumentation platforms in current use. These platforms are used as a basis for building electronic test equipment or automation systems, such as might be used in a mobile phone manufacturing test environment...
, an open industry standard for modular measurement and automation, and NI TestStand, which provides for tracking high-volume manufacturing tests.
2000s
User traffic and e-commerce rapidly improved after the company acquired the ni.com URL and began investing in web technologies to better highlight their products. The company quickly introduced online configuration tools to help customers decide which NI products would best interact to solve their problem, and introduced NI Developer Zone, which provides the end-user developers access to example programs, sample code, and development tips, as well as forums in which users and NI employees could help answer questions about the products.
NI undertook a building spree in 2000-2001, first opening its first international manufacturing plant in
DebrecenDebrecen , , is the second largest city in Hungary after Budapest. Debrecen is the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the capital of Hajdú-Bihar county.-Name:...
,
HungaryHungary , in English officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a member of OECD, NATO, EU, V4 and is a Schengen state...
. This plant helped to diversify the company's manufacturing capabilities, which had been centered at company headquarters in Austin, and allowed for more direct shipping to the company's European customers. NI now manufactures nearly 90% of its production in
DebrecenDebrecen , , is the second largest city in Hungary after Budapest. Debrecen is the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the capital of Hajdú-Bihar county.-Name:...
http://digital.ni.com/worldwide/debrecen.nsf/sb/Product+Information?OpenDocument&node=203331_hu. In 2002, the company dedicated the , eight-story Truchard Design Center (known simply as Building C to employees) on their Mopac campus, which became the headquarters for the company's R&D operations. Upon completion of this building, the NI campus finally had enough capacity to move all Austin-based employees to a single location.
National Instruments sued
The MathWorksThe MathWorks, Inc. is a privately held, mid-size, multi-national corporation which specializes in technical computing software. Its main products include MATLAB and Simulink.- Corporate history:...
, Inc. for patent violations in 2002. For the next several years NI argued in court that the Mathworks had infringed on four NI patents, as their
SimulinkSimulink, developed by The MathWorks, is a commercial tool for modeling, simulating and analyzing multidomain dynamic systems. Its primary interface is a graphical block diagramming tool and a customizable set of block libraries. It offers tight integration with the rest of the MATLAB environment...
software was very similar to LabVIEW. A jury found that all four patents, U.S. Patent Nos. 4,901,221; 4,914,568; 5,301,336; and 5,291,587, were valid, and that the first three were illegally infringed upon. After several appeals, the case was finally resolved in 2004, when a federal judge barred The Mathworks, Inc. from manufacturing and shipping their Simulink products. NI offers a LabVIEW Simulation Interface Toolkit which customers of The Mathworks can purchase so that they have a licensed way to control and use the data they acquired while using Simulink.
Following the company model of selling directly to customers, by 2006 NI had opened 21 sales offices in Europe and 12 offices in the Asia/Pacific region, as well as a multitude of offices in the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East. Research and Development centers are located in Austin,
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
,
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
and
RomaniaRomania is a country located in Southeastern and Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its territory...
.
NIWeek
Beginning in 1995, National Instruments has held an annual developer conference in Austin. Engineers and scientists from around the world attend the week-long conference at the
Austin Convention CenterThe Neal Kocurek Memorial Austin Convention Center is a multi-purpose convention center located in Austin, Texas, USA. The building is also home to the Austin Toros basketball team with a seating capacity of 3,200....
. Activities center on technical sessions on the company's products as well as the underlying technologies, all taught by NI employees. An exhibition hall allows selected industry integrators and suppliers to showcase their products, and various customers or university students also present papers on their work with NI tools.
External links