Arlyn S. Powell, Jr.
AMP Inc. (Harrisburg, PA) is restructuring its premises wiring product lines under the new Premises Systems & Services Group led by group vice president and general manager D`Arcy Roche.
"We`re moving from being a component vendor to being a system vendor," says Roche. "End-users want a system solution today." The new AMP group offers not only components but also design, installation, management and support services for premises cabling and local area network (LAN) interconnect systems. Applications to be supported include Ethernet, token ring, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Fiber Distributed Data Interface. Symbolizing this change will be the new AMP catalog, which will be broken down by system (such as token ring) rather than component type (such as connectors). Each section will begin with a case study, and the catalog will also include a new design guide.
Roche states that AMP`s expansion from its traditional base of copper-cabling products is far from over. In fact, the company recently launched a major fiber-optic initiative known as Centralized Network Administration and last year, it introduced a line of wireless Ethernet LAN products. In the near future, the company plans to move into zone cabling, control and signal cabling, power distribution, and test and instrument systems.
"We are assembling a complete line of premises solutions for building networks based on centralized and distributed architectures using fiber, copper or wireless media," says Roche. "The new line of products complements our Ethernet, token ring and ATM network solutions in our mission to provide anytime-anywhere network interconnectivity."
To further underline this expansion, AMP has recently launched a low-cost audio and video distribution system. The AMP Multimedia System delivers bidirectional audio and video over existing Category 5 unshielded twisted-pair cabling networks and can be used for security, training, audiovisual, distance-learning and videoconferencing applications.
"Current network technology for transferring audio and video data tends to be costly and complex," says Roche. "This makes it difficult for organizations to deploy new multimedia applications. This approach is simple and cost-effective to install. It uses existing wiring, provides the required bandwidth, and can accommodate 1000 users on a single system. It is a significant breakthrough for enterprise-wide multimedia."
