Cognidox Ltd

“For fabless semiconductor companies, the day one pressure is raising finance”, said Paul Walsh, CEO of Cognidox Ltd, “Then it’s a struggle to find the best talent to build out the team. After that, the reality strikes that the key ingredient of the company – its intellectual property – is being stored and reviewed in a semi-random way and employees are wasting time having to search for information. There’s a push for the first customer design wins, and then it really hits that until the company gets control over its own documentation, sharing any with the new customers is a risky affair.”

It was a problem that faced Virata in the early ‘00s as it was building its Communications IC business and adding up to a dozen new OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) every month. It invested in the development of tools built on open source software and was able to provide a ‘self service’ portal for documentation and other functions on the company’s Extranet.

The tool continued to grow as Virata became GlobespanVirata and later Conexant Systems. Now, it was solving the problem of linking several dozen R&D centres distributed around the globe and enabling engineers to collaborate in a way that meant time zone differences actually became an advantage.

When the tool passed from Conexant to Vidanti in 2005 it was fully productized. There was now many ex-Virata engineers working for the new generation of Semiconductor companies, and they began to ask for the same level of effectiveness enjoyed by Virata. By word of mouth, the new CogniDox tool was adopted by several leading companies in the Cambridge and M4 corridor areas. It was time to give this product the full benefit of publicity, and so a buy-out followed and Cognidox Ltd was born.

What makes it special for Semiconductor and High-tech companies? Because CogniDox has grown organically inside the sector, it is a product that does exactly what these companies need and little of what they don't in document management. There are other segments with requirements for document image scanning and records keeping, but these are less relevant (and often confusing) to any High-tech company trying to improve its processes. Because CogniDox is so tailored to the sector it serves, CogniDox adoption rates are rapid and high, so return on investment is excellent.

Speaking of investment, many ‘enterprise suites’ aimed at this area are prohibitively expensive and over-engineered for what is required. CogniDox is based on an open source LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl) software stack so it can pass on cost savings and open architecture benefits, and enable companies to integrate it with other best-in-class commercial open source products.

There is little doubt that the semiconductor industry needs this help. Most silicon designs require a development budget of tens of millions of dollars. Most slip against schedule and go over-budget. Over 40% fail to get to production. Design flaws, which could have been identified by a more structured design review process, can render a maskset worth more than $1 million practically worthless. On top of that, there is a growing list of quality and regulatory compliance requirements such as ISO9001:2000 and Sarbanes Oxley.

Many attempt to solve this problem in-house and experiments with Wikis, version control systems and shared network folders can ominously become business-critical ‘solutions’ which won’t scale and are practically impossible to maintain.

High-tech companies who recognise these problems and see a match to their requirements are invited to read more about our solution at our web site – http://www.cognidox.com
 

About Us
CogniDox helps teams in Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Support/FAEs, Operations, and other departments to capture, share and publish product and design documentation on their Intranet and Extranet.

An intuitive interface helps break down the barriers to find information, share solutions and enjoy a faster, more productive development workflow inside your company. In addition, CogniDox will help you manage and publish documents and other content to licensed customers. It reduces technical support load and accelerates your customers' time-to-market.

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Company Information
Registered Office : Cognidox Limited, St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 0WS, UK

Limited company registered in England and Wales, No. 06506232
VAT Registration No. 930970714
Email salesinfo@cognidox.com
Telephone  +44 (0) 1223 911986