Hands-off operations with Itility managed IT services for Ampleon

Ampleon is a global semiconductor company, specializing in high-power radio frequency (RF) solutions. Established in December 2015, it originated from the RF Power business unit of NXP Semiconductors and is headquartered in Nijmegen, Netherlands. Ampleon operates worldwide, with over 1,200 employees across 17 sites on three continents. R&D is based in the Netherlands, France and China. And its own 24x7 manufacturing facility is in the Philippines. For Ampleon, R&D is a mission-critical process as it is the core driver of future customer value.

Ampleon chose for Itility because of our tendency to look beyond domains, bring people together and to translate business value into IT, whilst helping IT deliver solutions that enable business domains.

We supported Ampleon in three steps

1. Understand business requirements
   Our consultants worked closely with people that work in day-to-day operations. This way, we gained a deep understanding of challenges, requirements and visions. By collaborating with business and IT, we helped prioritize use cases that considered the needs of all stakeholders.
2. Translate this understanding into technical solutions
   Architects and engineers translated several use cases into managed solutions, using building blocks where possible and designing new solution blocks where needed.
3. Implement step by step and deliver as managed services
   Our engineers feel like part of our customer’s teams. Together, we implemented solutions step by step, moving a fragmented landscape toward fully managed services.

We currently manage an EDA platform in AWS (application platform for R&D workloads such as chip design and simulations), several business applications in Azure, and over 700 workplaces worldwide based on Microsoft365. By first implementing the EDA platform before rolling out the workplace solution, we significantly reduced the need for heavy-use workplaces - as the required applications run on the platform instead of on laptops or desktops. This also means sensitive data is stored centrally, reducing security risks.

To further reduce costs, we operate partly from India using our ‘best-shoring’ capability, in which combinations of on-shore/near-shore/off-shore create the best hybrid IT-operations solution for managed IT services.

For the EDA platform, we keep costs under control with our scheduler software. This combination of AI and optimization algorithms automatically scales cloud resources depending on simulation workloads. This ramp-up/ramp-down mechanism can save up to 80 % of usage related cost. Furthermore, we have implemented intelligent license management for expensive tools for R&D workloads such as Cadence, Synopsis and ADS, making sure unused licenses are prevented as much as possible.

What sets our IT managed services apart is our primary focus on understanding and design phases of customer collaborations. Further, we automate as much as possible to create “highly-hands-off” operations with maximum automation. For the remaining activities, we apply best-shoring to ensure fully managed IT services - always with personal contact when needed.