Vice President of Investor Relations, BELDEN INC
Transformation to Solutions Provider & Digital Transformation talk w Belden - @ARCadvisory Forum '23
Transformation to Solutions Provider & Digital Transformation Journey Interview with Jeremy M. Friedmar, Director of Product ...
About Aaron Reddington
In a September 2023 interview at the ARC Advisory Forum, Jeremy Friedmar, then Director of Product at Belden, discussed the company's transition from a wire and cable manufacturer to a provider of end-to-end industrial solutions. Friedmar stated that Belden, founded in 1902, began expanding its focus beyond wire and cable around 2004 following a merger with Cable Design Technologies. He said that in recent years the company has been "deliberate about offering true end-to-end solutions" to help customers achieve Industry 4.0 goals. Friedmar described Belden's investments in three areas: an industrial edge solutions portfolio, customer innovation centers, and an ecosystem partner program. He said the company aims to provide customers with flexibility to connect to any data source and send operational data to any destination, and that this agnosticism extends to edge applications. Friedmar noted that Belden has partnered with AWS, citing work to certify the Hirschman Op Edge 8D Industrial Edge gateway to run IoT Greengrass, which would be housed in the Belden Horizon app store. He attributed Belden's potential success in this space to its experience in OT networking, cybersecurity, and operational data pre-ingestion.
Transcript (19 segments)
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Harry Forbes0:05
Hi, this is Harry Forbes from ARC Advisory Group. I'm here today with Jeremy Friedmar of Belden. Jeremy, welcome.
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Jeremy Friedmar0:13
Thank you, Harry.
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Harry Forbes0:17
It's nice to have you here, Jeremy. In years past, people thought about Belden and they thought about wire, and that was wire and copper prices were kind of driving your business, but now it's substantially transformed. Can you talk about the kind of transformation that you've made and how you did it?
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Jeremy Friedmar0:32
Absolutely. Throughout our history, which actually goes back to 1902, you're correct. Belden's focus has been on wire and cable. We have been a wire and cable manufacturer, but when we go back to around 2004 following our merger with Cable Design Technologies, we deliberately tried to expand our focus beyond wire and cable to incorporate other non-cable products that we felt were complimentary to wire and cable to our portfolio. But within the last couple of years, we've really been deliberate about taking this bundle of products and being deliberate about offering true end-to-end solutions to our customers because we feel that we really need to provide additional value to them to realize their Industry 4.0 goals.
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Harry Forbes1:17
Well, you've made some substantial investments in acquisitions and both acquisitions and product development. Can you tell us a little about kind of the high points of those?
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Jeremy Friedmar1:27
Absolutely. As we began our journey to a solutions provider, we started by incorporating some very well-recognized brands into our portfolio, brands like Hirschman on the industrial networking side, or Lumber Automation with industrial connectivity, or ProSoft Technology with industrial gateways. But since we integrated those products into our portfolio, we've been deliberate about making investments into three additional categories. The first is the creation of an industrial edge solutions portfolio. The second is the creation of what we call customer innovation centers, and the third is the development of an ecosystem partner program.
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Harry Forbes2:09
Okay. Well, let's dive into those. First of all, you said an Edge Solutions program. What is that? What are you delivering for that?
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Jeremy Friedmar2:18
Absolutely. As we've developed into a solution provider for our customer, we've really tried to migrate and shift our focus from being a provider of solutions to customers that help them move their data and also protect their data to one that also enables customers to derive value from that data. And we are doing so through these industrial edge solutions. And our approach to this is by really empowering our customers with the ability to deploy Edge Compute within their industrial network infrastructure. And we're doing so in three ways. The first is the provision of industrial edge hardware, compute hardware. The second is through the provision of a platform through which orchestration of the devices and the edge applications can be conducted, and also the provision of those applications through a dedicated app store that is located in the platform. And finally, actually providing those applications themselves from our own development.
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Harry Forbes3:21
Okay. Well that sounds very IT like, but these services are available in the industrial infrastructure, the kind of industrial infrastructure that you're very well known for providing. That's right. With names like Hirschman.
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Jeremy Friedmar3:36
That's correct.
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Harry Forbes3:37
Okay. Well that's very interesting. It sounds very IT like and very more like what we would say the mainstream IT suppliers or the mainstream networking suppliers that would be thinking of and different from what we would think of traditionally as being Hirschman infrastructure, but you're keeping the ruggedness part of it. Right?
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Jeremy Friedmar4:00
But we feel that we are approaching it from a different and rather differentiated manner and a way that can provide additional value to our customers. The first part to highlight is the fact that we really want to provide our customers with flexibility. And what I mean by that is we want to provide them with the ability to connect to any data sources and send that operational data to any data destination. We want to be completely agnostic in that manner, and that's the approach we've taken thus far. And that agnosticism also extends to the edge applications that can be deployed on the hardware as well. We also feel that we have really a right to win in this space because of the core competency that we are able to offer through our experience in OT networking as well as cybersecurity, and of course the pre-ingestion of operational data, which we've derived from our experience from the Hirschman and the ProSoft brands respectively over the years.
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Harry Forbes4:59
Got it. Okay. Well, let's branch to the partner ecosystem you mentioned. I'd like to know something about that because it must tie in with the transformation of your product line that you talked about. So tell us about who you're partnering with and why that's important to you.
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Jeremy Friedmar5:17
Absolutely. We recognize despite this being a rather ambitious undertaking that we're taking as an organization that we do need help and we ultimately can't do it all ourselves. We have been very deliberate about pursuing third party well-recognized vendors in our space that can provide solutions that are complimentary to what we already offer from our own core competency. Today I mentioned before with the deployment of our new edge solutions and the creation of this app store that is housed within our new Belden Horizon platform, we're working with third parties to leverage the applications that are already very well recognized and widely used among our customer base and make them available to our customers in a manner that can be complimentary to the products and solutions that they're already using from Belden.
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Harry Forbes6:10
Okay. Can you give us a specific example or two of the kind of customers that are partners rather that are critical to this or that you think are the most important ones?
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Jeremy Friedmar6:20
Absolutely. So an example of a partner that we have begun working with is AWS. So we have embarked on a very, very fruitful partnership with them. And just as an example of our collaboration with them, we have been working on certifying our new Hirschman Op Edge 8D Industrial Edge gateway so that it's certified to run IoT Greengrass on the device, and we'll be able to house the IoT Greengrass container within the Belden Horizon app store.
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Harry Forbes6:49
Okay. That's a good example. I appreciate it, Jeremy. We look forward to hearing more about this. That's certainly a departure for Belden and hope to hear more about it in the future. I thank you for coming here.
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Jeremy Friedmar7:00
Great. Thank you very much for your time.
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Harry Forbes7:02
This is Harry Forbes from ARC Advisory Group. My guest has been Jeremy Friedmar from Belden. Thank you for watching.