What makes Getac Technology and its products stand out in the field of electronic defence manufacturing?
Jackson White: At Getac, we’ve historically provided rugged mobile computing solutions for the defence sector. Unlike our numerous other competitors, we only focus on mobile computing, which really sets us apart. To truly understand the challenges appearing in today’s digital aspirations in defence and to understand what those are in the mobile computing space, puts Getac in quite a good position.
We were first established as part of a joint venture between MiTAC and GE Aerospace Group to deliver one of the first mobile computers for platform analytics to the US Air Force. We’ve worked on that understanding ever since, to deliver not only ruggedised notebooks, but now also a range of ruggedised tablets as we move into mobility [computing], driven by ordinary consumers.
How do you see the technology evolving in the coming years?
Getac is closely monitoring all the trends in mobile computing to ensure that it can be incorporated into its rugged mobile devices roadmap. We’re certainly seeing areas of growth in the requirements for reduced power consumption processors, and innovative methods of charging and data connectivity. There are also likely to be integrations of AI technology later down the line, but that particular case still remains to be proved.
What Getac products lead the global defence market at present?
Currently, we have four really key products that are top sellers, all across different applications in the defence sector. So, firstly, we have the MX50, which is our recently launched product for dismounted soldiers. We also have the X500 and X500 server, which features a 15in fully mobile server capability. It’s also got 6TB worth of storage ready for what we can [do in] battlefield cloud computing, or for large data collection and analysis such as GIS applications.
For maintenance and general field use, we have our 13in notebook, the B300, which is extremely robust. Finally, for the dismounted headquarters applications, we have our s emi-rugged device, which is the S410.
How does the MX50 stand out from the competition and why is it a leading choice for defence organisations?
I think that the key point, from Getac’s point of view, is that we no longer just design a tablet or a product and then look at which markets we can push it into. We take a particular vertical such as defence, for example, with the MX50, and really try to understand the needs being used in that space before we start designing our products.
Everything we do is geared around that particular application. In the case of the MX50, it’s the dismounted soldier. So we study the issue in terms of the security defence industry organisations require. We think about how the device needs to be mounted onto the platform, which in this case is a person – whether it’s on the chest, the wrist, the leg or a pouch.
We also look at how the device is connected. In this case, that’s into different types of standard military radios, all of which have different connectors and protocols. When designing the MX50, we really examined the global defence market to see how we can ensure that we have legacy connectivity, current connectivity and how we can ensure that we future-proof the product for future connectivity, as digitalisation moves faster.
