About Hannes Niederhauser
Hannes Niederhauser, CEO of Kontron, described the company as a technology firm with over 7,000 employees that connects machines and devices to the internet, focusing on expensive equipment such as high-speed trains, aircraft, and welding robots. In a podcast, he stated that Kontron is one of only three providers in its market and, following Huawei's retreat from the European market, is winning 70 to 80 percent of tenders. He said the company buys hardware firms, adds its own software, and has increased gross margins from 30 to 36 percent in the first six months of the year. Niederhauser noted that Kontron is focused on five key technologies and predicted strong development if even two of them succeed.
Niederhauser also discussed past challenges, including a short-seller report in December 2021 that he said was addressed through forensic investigations by Deloitte and an unmodified audit opinion. He mentioned that chip shortages had created 108 million euros in undelivered orders and that paying premium prices on the spot market had reduced EBITDA by 1.1 million euros. In earlier interviews, he highlighted the benefits of the merger between Kontron and S&T, stating that the combined company could offer integrated hardware and software solutions. He also expressed a preference for the Austrian business environment, citing labor freedom and consensual unions, and criticized the ratio of lawyers to engineers in the United States.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Hannes Niederhauser's recent appearances.
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Transcript (11 segments)
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Host0:04
Today with me on our stage: Hannes Niederhauser, CEO of Kontron S&T.
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Hannes Niederhauser0:12
For years, software has been gaining importance in embedded systems, and hardware is becoming more strategic and interchangeable. This trend continues with cloud computing. From our perspective, this trend will even accelerate. Customers are solution-oriented and just want it to work. Whether it's an ARM processor, Intel, or something else doesn't matter; it just has to function. That means software is key, and manufacturers that don't work solution-oriented will lose the race. We at S&T see it that way too. We now have more software engineers: of about 2000 employees, 1400 are software engineers generating solutions. But the hardware function is taken for granted; it has to work, otherwise it's worthless. Accordingly, you have to silently keep the hardware running in the background. If you will, hardware is the duty, software is the icing on the cake.
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Host1:34
Now, on May 1st, the new data protection regulation comes into effect, protecting personal data. On one hand, there's this trend in Europe; on the other hand, the US wants to access all servers like a prosecutor. Does that kill the fun of the cloud, and people say they'd rather keep everything on their own premises? What's your view?
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Hannes Niederhauser1:55
I'm interested in what my customers see. Our customers certainly have a big problem with the NSA. In America, there are more lawyers than engineers, which is an unhealthy ratio. At least our German customers avoid American lawyers like the devil avoids holy water. So the clear path is towards a premium cloud solution. We take care of sensitive data on-site and only leave insecure data to the US prosecutor. But the question is: who manages these servers? The IT department or the embedded systems people? Ideally us. IT departments have SAP and services. One of our offerings we want to push is to operate on-premises data centers with our people. But there are certainly many customers who say they want their own people to do it because they want to be 150% sure they comply with all regulations.
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Host3:33
Now you have to say these employees are basically okay and they have their own language. The OT and AMBA guys don't understand that. So I often talk to others. How can you bring the people together?
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Hannes Niederhauser3:54
At S&T and Kontron, we have already done that. The SAP people are there, the people are there, and they get along wonderfully. In my view, it will become one department. If I combine networks, then both worlds understand each other. I need to know how the internet works and addressing, but I also need to understand how real-time capability works, which is the most important thing in the industrial environment. I assume that in the next five years this will become one department, and if not every employee speaks both languages, there will be no employees left.
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Host4:41
Okay, you have already mentioned real-time. It is the core field where embedded systems software developers come from. The cloud is somehow far away. How can you help them understand the cloud more easily and integrate it into their daily work?
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Hannes Niederhauser5:02
At our company, it already works. For example, we have BIOS engineers and low-level board engineers in Russia who we have develop the boards that are in the development lab in Germany, and they develop low-level software remotely. That is possible, and I think it's important for all engineers to be able to maintain things remotely. An embedded computer installed in a steel mill in Morocco – it is crucial that I can maintain it from here, even if the processor or software hangs. That is one of the challenges that the industry has already recognized.
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Host6:00
Now something personal: did you discover a personal highlight here at the fair?
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Hannes Niederhauser6:06
My favorite product is, of course, a Kontron product: our TSN starter kit. What is that? TSN stands for Time-Sensitive Networking, a real-time network. It is the symbiosis of IT and OT: a network where real-time data can run as well. I can set whether I want data every ten milliseconds or every five seconds – real-time data. And on the remaining bandwidth, you can let any internet traffic run. So anyone can play with it. The symbiosis of IT and OT has already happened here.
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Host6:52
Thank you very much.
