Evaluation Engineering - 21

DIGITIZERS, AWG'S

represented in 39 countries through cooperating partners. In 2015, we founded
SPECTRUM Instrumentation Corp. in the
USA with an office near New York to serve
US-customers efficiently without the time
shift between Europe and America and to
have this important market in our own
sphere of influence.

SPECTRUM CTO
Oliver Rovini and
CEO Gisela Hassler

You continued to sell your first ISA card,
PAD52, until 2007. To what do you attribute the long life of that product?

SPECTRUM EXECUTIVES
COMMENT ON COMPANY'S
30-YEAR HISTORY

Oliver Rovini: In fact, nearly all our products have a lifecycle of far more than 10
years. We're focused on long-term partnerships. It may take two or three years
from the end of development until a
SPECTRUM product is designed into an
OEM product due to the selection process,
budgeting, customer design cycles, and
official approvals. Long lifecycles of our
products allow the customer to sell his
instrument without changes for many
years. Furthermore, API-compatibility
over different series allows a smooth
replacement. We have customers that
started with ISA cards back in 1994 and
are now switching to the third generation
of SPECTRUM cards.

By Rick Nelson, Interim Chief Editor
SPECTRUM Instrumentation was
founded in 1989 by Gisela Hassler and
Michael Janz with the goal of developing
custom-built instrumentation. The company quickly transitioned from customization to standard product lines and
introduced its first ISA card in 1991. Over
the years, the company has achieved
many milestones. On the occasion of the
company's 30th anniversar y, EEEvaluation Engineering interviewed CEO
Hassler and CTO Oliver Rovini.
What prompted you and Michael Janz
to found SPECTRUM in 1989?
Gisela Hassler: Custom-made solutions
was the reason for founding the company,
but we left this path pretty soon, because
constant capacity utilization was a big
problem and the dependence on only
a few customers was very unpleasant.

That's why in 1991 we
launched the first
A /D conver ter
board, named
PA D52 , w it h
8-bit and 50 MS/s specifications.
When did you first start serving
international markets?
Gisela Hassler: In the beginning, we
spent our-at that time-small marketing budget only on print advertisement
in Germany. So it was a big surprise when
the first English-speaking customers
called us. This happened at the very beginning, in the early '90s, when the World
Wide Web didn't exist for common use.
The acceleration of our international
business was driven by requests and orders from other countries. We are now

PAD52, SPECTRUM Instrumentation's first card.

Have you always manufactured your
instruments in Germany, or have you
outsourced your manufacturing to contract manufacturers?
Gisela Hassler: Since the beginning, we
have been working with German partners
as contract manufacturers-for example,
for soldering or mounting of PCB components. The development, assembling,
DECEMBER 2019 EVALUATIONENGINEERING.COM

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Evaluation Engineering

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