Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1083315
80 I-CONNECT007 I REAL TIME WITH... IPC APEX EXPO 2019 SHOW & TELL MAGAZINE prietary, must-have-our-software situation, which is what we want them to have, but we understand the universal language is a long time coming. Overall, we're very excited to be involved with it and participate. From the ground up, we don't want to wait; we want to jump on now. Monte Cramer: If we were doing a head-to- head competition with somebody and we were both at the same level, the company with CFX would get bought. It's a competitive advantage to have your machine use the standards that everybody else is using when you present it to a customer. Dayney: IPC being involved is also key. If it was just a software supplier trying to develop this, then we'd be locked into one software supplier for this. CFX as an IPC standard is going to be a big point. Factories are going to need or want that speed. Hoa Nguyen CTO, Metcal For us, CFX is critical. It is a standard of communication protocol. Once you go to your customer, you don't have to have the hassle of an NDA. Before that, every time you'd use your proprietary format, you'd have to deal with an NDA. That's the fact, and we've been through it with a few cus - tomers. Now, with this IoT communications protocol being standardized, it will make that process easier. Since we can standardize that, customers like Apple, Plexus Corporation, etc., don't have to create 10 different applications or pull 10 dif- ferent types of data from10 different devices. Now, they can use one software, which can be developed internally by them, and they can deal with the communication protocol. We have that back and forth exchange of informa- tion; we've been doing that for the last four or five years. We tried to get some feedback from customers, and the proprietary format is always a hassle for us. The next thing is data analytics, which, we need to work closer to customers to under- stand their expectations and what they're look- ing for. Whatever we do here, it will definitely be value added for our customers without a doubt. Also, I absolutely see it as a competi- tive advantage because there are some cus-