UK design services firms still have an edge over emerging competition in low cost labour areas such as India, according to Kevin Edwards, the newly appointed business development manager at EnSilica.
The Wokingham-based IC contract design firm, which is seeing an increase in business and enjoys at least three consecutive years of growth, has been winning contacts against Indian design services competitors, said Edwards.
“We are aware of the threat but still think we can be competitive. We recently won a contract against an Indian design services company. If you compare hourly rates they will look very cheap but if you look at the whole price of the project, UK firms can compete,” said Edwards.
In the project won from an Indain competitor, Edwards said although their hourly rate was four times that of the competitor, EnSilica was proposing using six engineers’ time and the competitor 24 engineers.
“For software they [Indian competitors] have probably got it cracked but maybe not hardware,” he said. Another contract was picked up from an Indian firm that had failed to manage the contract. “We were brought in to firefight and rescue the project,” he said.
EnSilica has nine engineers currently but may add to its numbers, possibly with some temporary staff at first. The growth areas for the firm have been in FPGA and verification services. “For verification we have had a lot of enquiries, it is a major headache for people and very difficult to do on increasingly complex designs,” said Edwards.
He joined EnSilica after working for the European marketing group at Mentor Graphics.