AUSA Global Force: we have a major hit on our hands!

27 March 2019
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Our participation at AUSA Global Force here in our home city of Huntsville has been off the charts.  From the moment the doors opened, DoD general officers and senior executives from many major primes have been visiting our new booth.  

Why? Front and center of our booth is the Obox – it’s bright Abaco orange, so it’s hard to miss it - that we announced on the first day of the show yesterday, and it’s been generating a huge amount of interest and questions.   We’ve been continuously – and I mean ‘continuously’ - briefing visitors on Abaco’s capabilities and on our autonomous initiatives that are centered on the Obox.  Meetings have been non-stop.  

 

 

What intrigued/impressed those we spoke to about the Obox was that not only does Abaco make rugged compute boards, but that we have thought through the needs of the AI/autonomy developer community, and integrated our boards in a way that provides a flexible, multi-processor rugged platform that demonstrably supports the entire autonomy stack. Combined with the embedded ImageFlex, AXIS performance optimization and health monitoring tools, this platform truly jump-starts the autonomy development cycle.

Booth visits averaged 10-20 minutes and longer (with deep questions) and typically ended with “We will be talking a lot more with you about this”. In many years of booth duty, I’ve never seen better engagement nor enthusiasm. My sense is that this event and demonstration is moving us from vendor status into the realm of advisor at a DoD inflection point as they grapple with the opportunities and challenges around AI, autonomous capabilities and accelerated development cycles.   

 

 

It’s not, though, been exclusively about the Obox. Our RFSoC capabilities – in the shape of the VP430 RFSoC board - have also generated a lot of buzz.  It’s becoming clear that our displays and new capabilities are aligning directly with our customers’ R&D initiatives.  

It’s been a great day here in our own back yard!

Mark Hutnan

Mark joined Abaco as Vice President, Business Development in November 2017. Previously, he was Vice President and General Manager, US Federal Operations at Qualys, following five years with General Dynamics Mission Systems as Senior Manager, Business Development, Cyber Systems Division. Mark was a member of the US Marine Corps for 24 years following his graduation from North Carolina State University with a BS degree in Civil Engineering.