Wow, the folks at Altium are jumping up and down with excitement, and they have something to jump up and down about because they say that the company’s North American operation alone has acquired more than 500 new customers in the last 12 months. All are newcomers to Altium’s electronics design solution Altium Designer. Altium Designer’s single data model and unified architecture provide a system development platform for FPGA, PCB, and embedded software development, in a single application.

In addition to the electronics design authoring tools in Altium Designer, this platform architecture also provides intrinsic electronics design data management and IP support courtesy of the unified architecture.

"Electronic product design is at an inflection point where tool-chain approaches are struggling to meet the needs of today’s complex process and data management needs," said Gerry Gaffney, regional CEO of the Americas for Altium. "Altium’s unified approach to electronics design clearly resonates with these new customers, who come from many market sectors. They tell us they can see new ways to grow their businesses in increasingly complex and competitive markets, increase their productivity and lower their costs – and do all this without compromising innovation."

In December 2009, Altium surveyed these new customers to discover how their design processes had changed. According to the folks at Altium, productivity had improved markedly; they say that "84 percent of Altium’s new users reported that they had experienced improvements of more than 200 percent." (I'm still trying to wrap my brain around this ... what did the remaining 16% of users experience?)

The folks at Altium go on to say that replacing design tools and environments can seem daunting, yet 85 percent of Altium’s new users found the migration to Altium Designer as expected, or easier than expected. Also, 89 percent of Altium’s new users would recommend Altium to colleagues.

Now I'm reeling under this barrage of percentages – 100% of the editors in my office say that their heads hurt (grin).

But seriously, this really is cool stuff. If you haven’t already seen it, then you should bounce over to the Altium Designer page on Altium's website and click on the Guided Tour link – I think you'll be impressed!