NATICK, MA—A new report from Venture Development Corp. finds that purchasers of external chassis and module and plug-in analog I/O boards for data-acquisition applications expect to make significant shifts in the types of products they purchase over the next five years.

The report is based on a survey of end users, OEMs and other purchasers of data acquisition products, as well as what are likely to be requirements four years from now. Products covered in the survey include external chassis and modules-data loggers, distributed/remote I/O, paperless chart recorders, PC front ends and standalone systems; plug-in analog I/O boards classified by bus architectures-compact PCI, ISA, PC/104, PCI, PCMCIA (PC Cards), PXI, VME and VXI.

Factors leading to increased demand include:

• A greater need for testing to ensure quality and robustness of products and to increase productivity.
• Increasing regulatory agency requirements for data.
• Need is often keyed to development activities in firms—new projects result in more procurements.
• Price is a consideration—lower prices will lead to more usage. For example, the ability to use commercial off-the-shelf software is helping to lower prices on data acquisition products for military/aerospace applications.
• Obsolescence of older data-acquisition products. Newer products can provide better reliability and performance and are likely to be faster, have more options and may be cheaper.

The entire report is available at http://www.vdc-corp.com/industrial/reports/03/br03-15.html.