This month, we would like to feature itemis AG, a company which became a member of AmCham Germany very recently. This member story sheds light on itemis AG's innovative projects and software. They also describe their curated methods to develop techonology on a sustainable basis and how they profit from the transatlantic relations.
What are the core competencies of itemis? Can you tell us more about specific projects itemis is involved in?
itemis is recognized for its competence in the IoT and automotive industry as a leading consulting and software company. The YAKINDU IoT Suite has been applied for example at Elon Musk's hyperloop vehicles. The YAKINDU Security Analyst Software is used by many German and international companies and simplifies the approach of companies for the newest 2021 ISO/ UN cyber security standards. Our YAKINDU products are used at Stanford University, RWTH Aachen University or at research institutions such as Fraunhofer.
What made itemis the #1 Innovator of the Year 2019 in the TOP 100 innovation competition and how are innovations implemented into the everyday work life at the company?
Our secret sauce is “4+1”. Since our founding in 2003, every software engineer has been working on projects with clients for four days.
The “+1” day is used solely for innovation projects together with clients, research institutes and to develop new methods, tools, platforms, software solutions – or to learn something new. Thereby, the entire company continuously innovates and the customers working with itemis have immediate access to the newest technologies, methods, and solutions.
Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming more ubiquitous in today's smart buildings, Alexa-Ecosystems, and everyday life. How does itemis help their customers?
With the innovative SaaS FotaHub (www.fotahub.com), itemis is one of the world's most cost-effective highly secure services, providing firmware update over the air services for small edgeless and larger edgeless microcontroller devices on a single platform. These microcontrollers are the core of IoT.
The benefit of FotaHub is the cross-platform and vendor-independent usage. If a company engages in the IoT-world, they need to continuously provide firmware updates to address for example the newest cybersecurity issues as well as to make the IoT device better for the user. A practical example is that more than 30.000 different devices from more than 4.500 manufacturers are connected to Alexa… and if the competition provides a better user experience, then itemis can help any company to regularly update their connected device similar to an iPhone or a Tesla.
Model-based software development is one of the most important foundations of itemis. Which principles does itemis follow so software can be used and developed sustainably?
itemis provides low-code development of software, which is especially important for efficient programming of embedded devices. Since we specialize in model-based software development as well as domain-specific language development, our methods and tools are extremely sustainable and flexible by default. Where traditional programming requires hundreds of lines of code, our model-based abstraction allows us to do the same in only a few tenths of lines of code.
How does itemis benefit from an AmCham Germany membership in reaching its goals?
We are currently opening a new office in Chicago to strengthen the collaboration between the American and German trade. We are looking forward to our AmCham membership and hope to contribute as well as benefit from interaction with many American and German companies interested in the application of IoT, embedded systems with TinyAI or Tiny ML in our smart world of tomorrow.
