Applied Wave Research (AWR) has traditionally enjoyed a large and loyal customer base in Europe — last year a significant portion of the company’s sales came from European customers and we look forward to growing our relationships with these customers and the region as a whole. A key means of achieving that objective is to exhibit at European Microwave Week. With its large number of quality attendees it is the exhibition of choice in Europe for AWR to launch new products and technologies.

This year, for example, we have specifically targeted EuMW 2007 as the event at which to launch AXIEMä, AWR’s new three-dimensional (3D) planar electromagnetic (EM) simulation technology. It is an excellent forum in which to showcase our innovative product portfolio to Europe's leading electronics design houses and provides the opportunity for our personnel to interact on a personal level with European customers and to observe the latest RF/microwave product advancements being developed by those customers.

Since its inception, AWR has been a global company, and as such views Europe as an important centre with global reach for the electronic design community. For its part, EuMW provides the European high-tech community with a finite and focused window from which to come together and exchange knowledge and information.

While the majority of the representatives are from within Europe, companies like AWR can take advantage of this proximity-effect and send corporate personnel to the show to gain first-hand information, thoughts and feedback from customers as well as the broader European RF/microwave industry.

EuMW has been in existence for many years as an organized pan-European show that has continued to grow as an educational event, with hundreds of technical papers delivered. Presenters range from post-graduate students to well-known industry veterans and hail from every corner of the world, making it a truly global event. Individual attendees have the ability to select those papers and presentations that are most interesting and relevant to them, and attend the talks and interact with the presenter and the audience itself.

In this way, ongoing education (which is often a low priority within the industry) happens at a pace that is right for the individual, but it also has the advantage of being embedded within a technical conference and trade show for which management can more readily justify/approve attendance. EuMW is well-served by continuing to offer engineers an opportunity to hear the latest technological advances delivered by like-minded professionals, and as long as the content is strong, current and topical, the event will attract the right audience.

Looking forward, the challenges faced by AWR and EuMW are the same — namely how to continue to adapt to an ever-evolving marketplace when the pace of change is faster than ever before. For AWR this means making sure we continue to innovate new technologies, products and design flows so that customers can extract significant and quantifiable value from our software solutions, whether that be in fewer design cycles, faster design times, or development cost savings. To see how we are developing this strategy visit us at Stand 912.