Test and Measurement: Dekra heads toward 100 with record sales

Privately-held Dekra will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2025

Dekra, which says it is the world’s largest privately held testing, inspection and certification company, recorded sales of 4 billion Euros for the first time in its history during 2023 and expects to see even more growth when it closes out 2024.

Dekra said that in the first 10 months of 2024, its core business segment of Testing, Inspections & Certification grew more than 7%. In its current fiscal year, Dekra reported that it is seeing growth in Americas region of around 14%, growth of about 9% in northwest Europe and around 9% in Asia-Pacific.

“We are optimistic that we can close 2024 with a mid-single digit increase in sales,” said Stan Zurkiewicz, CEO and chairman of the board of Dekra e.V. and Dekra SE, at the company’s annual review at its Stuttgart, Germany headquarters.

Dekra said that it is achieving growth “despite very challenging external conditions,” including a recession in Germany and a struggling European auto market, and that along with the strength of its testing and certification core business its “new strategic business fields related to future mobility, sustainability, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence” are helping to position the company for success.

DEKRA will celebrate its 100th anniversary during the summer of 2025 and says that it expects to maintain its growth trajectory during the coming year.

In other test news:

–Rohde & Schwarz has a new COO as of earlier this month: Markus Fischer.

Fischer, age 44, has been with the company since 2011 and part of corporate management since mid-2020, when he was appointed EVP of operations and was responsible for the company’s supply chain, procurement and all production activities, including improving efficiency, flexibility and scalability. “His division not only ensured delivery capability in times of uncertain supply chains, but also contributed substantially to the stability of Rohde & Schwarz,” Rohde said in a statement.

Fischer’s leadership during the pandemic was instrumental to his elevation to the COO role. “Since we have been operating for several years in an environment that poses major economic and geopolitical challenges, it is essential that we sharpen our focus on stability and scalability. This is what Markus Fischer stands for. Together, we will make the company even more resilient against external factors,” said Christian Leicher, Rohde & Schwarz’s president and CEO.

Rohde & Schwarz also announced this week that, in a continuation of the company’s long-standing relationship with over-the-air testing specialist ETS Lindgren, the R&S CMX500 one box signaling tester and R&S SMBV100B vector signal generator has been integrated into ETS Lindgren’s EMQuest software, with support for 5G sub-6 GHz and millimeter-wave frequencies, Wi Fi 7 and A-GNSS.

–Keysight Technologies struck a partnership with Instrumentix to launch a new trade analytics monitoring offering for financial markets, which leverages Keysight’s network visibility solutions and Instrumentix’s xMetrics flow monitoring and analytics tool to offer “comprehensive trade visibility, encompassing optical taps, high-speed packet brokers, multicast gap detection, time synchronization, and flow monitoring software,” according to Keysight.

“The xMetrics integration with Keysight’s high-powered network packet brokers (NPBs) provides traders, exchanges, and other financial services providers with a unified dashboard for real-time market data monitoring and order execution,” explained Keysight in a company release.

“Integrating xMetrics for execution analysis with network packet brokers capable of monitoring 400Gbps of line-rate market data feeds creates a powerful solution,” said Steve Hicks, founder and CTO of Instrumentix. “This enables capital markets players to verify execution efficiency, ensure customer experience, and improve their operational performance.”

-Korean testing and certification organization TTA signed an agreement to cooperate with O-RAN Alliance, which means that individual O-RAN Alliance standards will be able to be adopted as TTA standards and support a broader, interoperable global ecosystem for O-RAN.

“The Cooperation Agreement we have signed will combine the expertise and influence of both organizations to ensure interoperability in the open RAN market and the deployment of systems based on integrated, standards-based technologies,” said Seung-Hyun Son, president of TTA, in a statement.

-ICYMI: Verizon is prepping its network for the higher speed and capacity demand expected to be generated by artificial intelligence workloads, with a recent metro trial achieving speeds of 1.6 terabits per second (Tbps). The trial in Verizon’s live fiber network took place in the Boston metropolitan area, using a single-carrier wavelength and Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) coherent optical solution. More details in this piece.

–Emerson Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Emerson, has made a strategic investment in a start-up focused on advanced battery testing and monitoring software for the electric vehicle, energy storage and industrial markets. The start-up, called EECOMOBILITY, builds artificial intelligence software and rapid battery testing and characterization systems.

Thurston Cromwell, head of Emerson Ventures and vice president of development and innovation at Emerson, said: “EECOMOBILITY’s AI-driven software for fault detection and battery testing aligns with Emerson’s acquisition of NI and growing leadership in test and measurement technologies and expertise across the automotive sector.”

Emerson acquired test company NI about a year ago for $8.2 billion. NI became a new Test and Measurement business segment within Emerson’s Software and Control group. Emerson indicated when it closed on the NI acquisition that it expected the addition of NI to expand its addressable markets, particularly in high-growth industrial software.