Slightly Sensible - B&B Insider

Fantasy Mike, and Real Mike’s Wild Ride

  

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Dear Reader:

I’m settling in for winter here in the Illinois plains. The signs are all there. Leaves have lost their grip, lawn mower stowed and out back those pesky deer are munching away at left over pumpkins. Fall is a great season. Hate to see it go - ‘cuz I know what’s next.

But there is something relaxing about a frosty fall evening in front of the fireplace, ice cubes clinking in a nice glass of Scotch, listening to the cool jazz of Miles and Coltrane.

Fantasy Mike leads quite a life.

Real Mike remembers those days...

(If you’re living the life of fantasy Mike, I wouldn’t object to an invitation. I’ll bring my own glass and logs for the fire).

It’s remarkable how life gets more complex - and wonderfully flavorful - as time marches on.

I remember when Thanksgiving was a gateway to the end of the year - time to tie up loose ends. Plan Holiday travel, tidy up the lab. Pop a new hole in your belt for the Thanksgiving feast.

Time flies when you’re having fun. This time of year is now a mind-melding jambalaya of concerts, business cases, ball games, 2012 planning, school plays, customer consulting, product road-mapping and airport terminals (as you read this I’m likely clinging to a boarding pass for an overbooked flight home from California with a bunch of folks hoping to be somewhere else for Thanksgiving).

Life is a frenzy - and I wouldn’t want to miss even a single beat.

Here at B&B we’re smack in the middle of some of the most exciting growth that I’ve been a part of in my long history with the company. Good things are happening -- Great things are coming.

Here are a few fun things that have sprung up in the last few weeks.

Product awards.

For the second year in a row, Control Engineering selected a B&B product as a finalist for its 2012 Engineers Choice awards. In fact, reflecting their wisdom, this year they’ve selected two of our new products.

First - our isolated, rugged USB hub (that would be the UHR304 for those of you reaching for your credit cards). I think highly of this thing myself, in fact just last week I put together a quick two minute video tour. (And if you have any inklings of using USB away from the safe haven of your desktop, watch my video on how to make USB reliable in ruggedized applications, this one will take a few minutes longer ‘cuz I have lots to tell you, but I promise it’s worth your time.)

Our second finalist is our new line of rugged plug and play Ethernet switches. Why choose an unmanaged switch for an award finalist? Because the new ESW100 line does everything just a bit better than everyone else. The smallest rugged switch on the market with fiber options. Flexible mounting means that a single part number can fit virtually any cabinet or panel. Rugged shock and vibration specs. Hazardous location rated. It’s not any single thing that makes the new ESW100 family stand out - it’s the sum of all the little things.

Hey, if you happen to have a free moment in your frenzied life, do me a favor and click over to Control Engineering to cast your vote. If you subscribe to their print or e-letters, you’re eligible to help make some of my favorite new products famous.

This week we celebrated the one month anniversary of the acquisition of Quatech. There are so many dimensions to this that there is no shortage of impactful stuff to work on. Great new people, new products, new channel partners, and outstanding capabilities in WiFi - both standalone and embedded. My crystal ball says that WiFi is one of three wireless standards that will ultimately rule the world. You’ll hear more from me on that down the road. Whether you want to network a single industrial scale, or you want to embed WiFi into thousands of access control devices -- Quatech brings the technology and application experience that will get the job done for you -- quickly, and reliably.

Our snarky marketing folks have been frantically busy too. Last week an anonymous B&B marketing elf slipped the results of a new brand survey into my inbox. They had a project up their sleeve a couple months back to take your pulse on how B&B and our competitors are doing. (Dunno if I’m supposed to be letting the cat out of the bag but I’m writing this far too late for last minute censoring - let’s keep this between you and I just in case). Bottom line is that over 500 folks like you defined 19 company attributes and scored B&B and our competitors against them. Being humble... B&B did well. Being not so humble, we kicked serious booty. B&B scored highest in every one of the 19 categories - sometimes by a factor of 2 to 3 times. Let me know if you’d like a "B&B Electronics for President" bumper sticker to fill that void on your bumper right between your "My child is an honor student" and "World’s Greatest Engineer" stickers. I might just have some printed up...

Busy month -- and we even managed to squeak out a couple great new products.

Does it tweak you off that you can only plug USB devices into your PC? Does me. What if you want to put a card reader more than a measly 5 meters from your PC? Bar code printers? QA scale? Problem solved. The new UE204 is an Ethernet-enabled USB hub. That means you can now reach your USB peripherals over your LAN. If you can reach it with Ethernet, you can pop in a UE204 and it will give you four USB ports that can be reached from any networked computer - just like a local USB connection. Great little problem solver that can save you thousands on PC’s and expensive device upgrades. Great device - I’ll make up a demo video for you soon.

We’ve also cranked out a new family of rugged four port Ethernet serial servers. If you’ve got 232, 422, or 485 devices that you’d like to reach with copper or fiber Ethernet, the VESR4x4 four port Ethernet serial server gives you all the features and flexibility you need for virtually any job - and the rugged reliability that you expect from B&B (survey says so!).

Whew - getting late now and Fantasy Mike can almost hear the crackle of the fire and those ice cubes clinking. Real Mike has to take out the trash, walk the dog, and pack a bag for the early-morning glamour of O’Hare. What to do...

Talk back - is it just me and some late-blooming version of ADD? Or are you feeling the gravitational pull of the 21st century acceleration too?

Happy Connections - and for those of us State-side, Happy Thanksgiving!

Mike Fahrion

P.S. Don’t forget to vote!