Including solicitation of interest from potential acquirers

[Reds]

Y'all should read the PDF versions of the letters Emerson sent before getting your panties in a bunch about LabVIEW's future. Quoting from one of Emerson's letters:

We are very excited about the combination of our two firms and the potential we can achieve together. Emerson has long admired NI as a technology leader in the electronic test and measurement industry, a complementary adjacency to our Automation Solutions business with a similar technology stack of intelligent devices, controls, and software. We have been particularly impressed with NI’s portfolio including modular intelligent devices and the LabVIEW suite of offerings, as well as NI’s industry stewardship over many decades in this space. Combining NI with Emerson would lead to significant opportunities for both of our teams and further develop our position as a premier global automation company.

Edited January 30, 2023 by Reds

[Reds]

9 hours ago, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

That is partly NI's work. They were pretty aggressive about defending their idea by applying for quite a few patents and defending them too. Of course if you go to the trouble to apply for a patent you have to be willing to defend it, otherwise you eventually use the right to a patent anyways.

And they did buy up some companies that had something similar to LabVIEW, such as DasyLab for instance, although in my opinion DasyLab didn't quite go beyond the standard "wire some icons together" similar to what HPVee did, and what Node-Red is doing too. But they tried to use some structures that were darn close to LabVIEW loops and that was a prominent NI patent. So NI eventually approached them and made them the offer to either buy them or meet them in front of a judge. The rest is history.

100% this. Also, don't forget they famously sued MathWorks when MatLab started to roll out graphical programming tools that looked a little bit too much like LabVIEW. That cold war finally ended, but only very recently.

Edited January 30, 2023 by Reds

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

1 hour ago, Reds said:

We have been particularly impressed with NI’s portfolio including modular intelligent devices and the LabVIEW suite of offerings, as well as NI’s industry stewardship over many decades in this space. Combining NI with Emerson would lead to significant opportunities for both of our teams and further develop our position as a premier global automation company.

I'm not convinced. They either have no idea about how complicated LabVIEW is or just hoped they could put some sand in the NI managers eyes by teasing them with what they thought is still NI's pet child.

[ShaunR]

5 minutes ago, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

I'm not convinced. They either have no idea about how complicated LabVIEW is or just hoped they could put some sand in the NI managers eyes by teasing them with what they thought is still NI's pet child.

Me neither. What exactly are "the LabVIEW suite of offerings"? (Please don't tell me BridgeVIEW or whatever they are calling it now )

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

2 hours ago, ShaunR said:

Me neither. What exactly are "the LabVIEW suite of offerings"? (Please don't tell me BridgeVIEW or whatever they are calling it now )

My snarky response would be LabVIEW NXG. 😀

More realistically you could consider the LabVIEW realtime and LabVIEW FPGA as parts of a bigger suite.

BridgeVIEW morphed into the LabVIEW DSC (Data Logging and Supervisory Control) Module long ago (LabVIEW 7 or so), which is an addon, similar to Vision Control and such. But it is legacy: 32-bit only, not really improved for a long time, it is still using SQL Server Express 2012, which is not compatible to the latest Windows versions. 

Edited January 30, 2023 by Rolf Kalbermatter

[hooovahh]

Topic split to here discussing WATS and Virinco.

[X___]

On 1/28/2023 at 2:36 AM, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

There is only a relatively small development team left for LabVIEW, apparently mostly located in Penang, Malaysia, if I interpret the job offers on the NI site correctly and they are probably scared to death about the huge and involved legacy code base that LabVIEW is and don’t dare to touch anything more substantial out of well founded fear to break a lot of things with more involved changes.

I was puzzled by that statement and since I am unable to do anything more demanding at this time, I checked the job offers at NI. There are 4 sites: Texas, Costa-Rica, Hungary, Malaysia.

Most of the software-related postings appear to be API and driver related. I would be surprised that any of the frontend software is developed outside a tight-knit group in Austin (especially because NI is not an open source software developer, where delocalization is the rule).

[X___]

On 1/30/2023 at 12:24 AM, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

That is partly NI's work. They were pretty aggressive about defending their idea by applying for quite a few patents and defending them too. Of course if you go to the trouble to apply for a patent you have to be willing to defend it, otherwise you eventually loose the right to a patent anyways.

And they did buy up some companies that had something similar to LabVIEW, such as DasyLab for instance, although in my opinion DasyLab didn't quite go beyond the standard "wire some icons together" similar to what HPVee did, and what Node-Red is doing too. But they tried to use some structures that were darn close to LabVIEW loops and that was a prominent NI patent. So NI eventually approached them and made them the offer to either buy them or meet them in front of a judge. The rest is history.

Some of the earlier patents (still listed in Help>>Patents...) have long expired. The latest is dated 2014.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

3 hours ago, X___ said:

Some of the earlier patents (still listed in Help>>Patents...) have long expired. The latest is dated 2014.

Sure you could nowadays create almost a clone without fearing an NI letter to arrive. But who wants to do that?

 

 

[X___]

And the saga continues...

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/national-instruments-picks-fortive-keysight-challengers-emersons-bid-sources-2023-03-03/

[crossrulz]

Keysight buying NI would be monopolistic (2 of the biggest T&M companies merging).  Not likely to happen, but I could see Keysight buying Digilent (an NI company) and Emerson buying the rest of NI.  I'm not familiar with Fortive, so I may have to look into them.

But sale by early April?!  At least its not far from now.

 

Edit:  Fortive owns Fluke and Tektronix.  Them buying NI would be interesting as well.  Would the parent company force NI and Tek to work together on a PXI scope again?

Edited March 3, 2023 by crossrulz

[ShaunR]

Quote

National Instruments put itself up for sale in January

[Neil Pate]

A bit more news on this

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/emerson-electric-nears-deal-national-instruments-sources-2023-04-12/

[Antoine Chalons]

it's official now
https://investor.ni.com/news-releases/news-release-details/emerson-advance-global-automation-leadership-through-acquisition

[X___]

It doesn't say much of what the expected position reshuffling is going to be, but based on past history, it it unlikely they will not change anything to the management and strategy. I don't anticipate a reboot of LabVIEW or doubling down on investment and renewal of hopes for the tool though.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

One of Emerson's critique point about the NI strategy was its above market average spending in R&D. While LabVIEW development is only a small part of that spending, it does not bode well for the future of LabVIEW. 

[Antoine Chalons]

NI's head of developer relation, Nancy Henson, said at a conference recently that it was not clear yet for NI how they were going to reallocate the c# developers who were working on NXG... Well, Emerson indeed wants to reduce R&D spendings, where will they start?

As  a reminder, a year or 2 ago NI laid off 9% (or was is 7%?) of their global workforce, mostly in sales and admin.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Antoine Chalons

[ShaunR]

17 hours ago, Antoine Chalons said:

As  a reminder, a year or 2 ago NI laid off 9% (or was is 7%?) of their global workforce, mostly in sales and admin.

I'd be happy if 90% sales and admin were laid off in every company. 

[SebastienM]

I personally dislike the attached infographic. It seems to send a bad message, like "NI portfolio is not well suited for production".

[jcarmody]

13 hours ago, SebastienM said:

"NI portfolio is not well suited for production"

One of my past managers said, "This isn't a laboratory so why are we using LabVIEW?"  I'm sure he didn't capitalize it correctly when he said it, but I'm glad he (and his colleagues) aren't here anymore. :shakesfist:

[jacobson]

5 hours ago, jcarmody said:

One of my past managers said, "This isn't a laboratory so why are we using LabVIEW?"  I'm sure he didn't capitalize it correctly when he said it, but I'm glad he (and his colleagues) aren't here anymore. :shakesfist:

I guess that rules out MATLAB too.

[codcoder]

It can also be that they simply need to frame it somehow. There is most likely a overlap in the middle, NI is more suited for production but Emerson atleast a little for development (I have no experience of Emerson's offering). But somewhere I line had to be drawn.

[ShaunR]

It's all gone a bit quiet on the acquisition front. Was supposed to be concluded in early April but we're nearly in June. Trouble at t' mill?

Edited May 22, 2023 by ShaunR

[crossrulz]

The announcement for the acquisition did happen in early April.  Now it is just waiting for approval by the US government and who knows what other legal red tape for it to actually happen.  One of the articles mentioned the acquisition finalization was expected to be in Emerson's financial 2024 H1, which starts in October.  Do not expect to hear anything until that happens.

Edited May 22, 2023 by crossrulz

[ShaunR]

46 minutes ago, crossrulz said:

The announcement for the acquisition did happen in early April.  Now it is just waiting for approval by the US government and who knows what other legal red tape for it to actually happen.  One of the articles mentioned the acquisition finalization was expected to be in Emerson's financial 2024 H1, which starts in October.  Do not expect to hear anything until that happens.

So I can retire in October?