Although the economy appears to be on the mend, established technology companies and venture capitalists alike remain cautious about their investments. When considering investments, acquisitions or major product purchase decisions, they are wary of accepting companies’ claims about their technology at face value and often turn to outside experts for technical due diligence evaluations to assess and manage risk.
Technical due diligence can encompass a broad-based evaluation of the value of a company’s technology portfolio, capabilities, and prospects. For example, a thorough assessment of a processor vendor may include a careful evaluation of architecture, implementation, development tools, personnel and market strategy. Or the due diligence process may focus on one critical aspect of the company or product. Both types of assessment are best handled by analysts who understand the technology at hand, know its target applications, and have a broad perspective of the competitive landscape.
BDTI has been providing technical due diligence evaluations of embedded processing technology and companies to investors, acquirers, and customers for many years. BDTI’s independence, integrity, technical expertise and industry knowledge make it the natural choice for this work. In one project, a semiconductor manufacturer was contemplating the purchase of a proprietary image processing algorithm. The algorithm had been demonstrated on a personal computer, but the acquisition decision hinged on whether it could be made to run in a cell phone. The algorithm provider had asserted that it could, but the potential acquiring company needed independent verification and validation. BDTI examined the PC implementation and analyzed how the algorithm would map onto a handset processor. BDTI then drew on its extensive software optimization experience to carefully estimate the performance that would be required by a fully optimized, assembly language implementation of the algorithm on the target processor.
BDTI provided the chip company with a clear answer to the question of whether the algorithm would work for their product, enabling the company to reduce its risk and providing a clearer view of the value of the investment.
To learn more about how BDTI can meet your due diligence needs, contact Jeremy Giddings at BDTI (giddings@BDTI.com).
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