Company Philosophy

We are committed to maintaining our reputation for providing good value products and services by:

• Working with "best in class" software vendors
• Offering a professional and honest approach to sales
• Delivering high quality skills based training services
• Supporting our customers with a dedicated technical services

Rising to the challenge

We are constantly looking for ways to improve our services and widen our operational scope. In addition we believe passionately in the world-beating capabilities of UK & Irish electronics industries. Our activities extend beyond our products and services as we are active with a number of groups and institutions. 

The future success of Premier is inextricably linked with the future success of the UK & Irish electronics industries. We are all ravaged by the onslaught of technology prophesised by Gordon Moore* and while governments may take time to realise this fact, we at Premier work hard in the general electronics community to represent our customer's interests. 

Our sponsorship of the UK and Irish Chapters of the IPC Designers Council plus active involvement in various lobbying and discussion groups shows a commitment beyond the expected norm for a commercial organisation like Premier.

*The observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. 

In subsequent years, the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current definition of Moore's Law, which Moore himself has blessed. Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore's Law to hold for at least another two decades.

Company History

Founded in January 1994, Premier EDA Solutions was formed with a mission to bring a modern approach to the sales and support of electronic design automation software. At that time (and indeed still today), EDA sales predominantly involved blue-suited sales people taking up their customer's valuable time by on-site visits and "Blue Peter style (here's one I made earlier)" product demonstrations.

From day one, we recognised that our customer's time is at a premium and that they are certainly wary of all of the usual commercial tricks and marketing claims. We therefore adopted a professional, straight talking approach to telephone based sales - certainly not telemarketing.

Initially, a Protel Value-Added Reseller, Premier enjoyed fantastic success during the "Windows EDA" revolution. The UK Protel user community increased by 700% in a few years. Our success continued with the introduction of the P-CAD product line in 2000. We are now one of Altium's favourite resellers and indeed one of the largest independent revenue sources for Altium world-wide.

The introduction of Protel's EDA/Client (now known as Design Explorer) platform in 1995 presented a whole host of opportunities for Premier. Our newly formed development department saw us form technical relationships with Protel, PADS and OrCAD and gave birth to a host of exciting new products and add-ons. Our ability to extend the feature-sets of these systems allows Premier to provide functionality beyond the box. Illustrations of this included actiVEMC advisory software, actiVplace auto-interactive PCB placement, library viewers, test point utilities and even bespoke developments for a number of our larger customers.

Year 2000 saw a widening of our focus from software reseller to solutions provider. A new division was formed in the company dedicated to the provision of skills based training courses. Independent of software, these courses concentrate on teaching design skills from foundation to intermediate level. For advanced delegates, we became an authorised IPC Training Centre offering the coveted IPC Designers Certification programme that provides an internationally-recognised qualification for PCB design. With over 100 properly qualified designers through our doors in less than two years, the skills training division has enjoyed some fantastic success.

In January 2001 we started a new operation dedicated to the Irish community. Success here has been clearly illustrated by the wealth of training courses that we run in this territory. The fact that the majority of Dublin Universities now use the Protel software is another indication of our dedication to the region. In fact Irish educational establishments now account for over 300 licenses.

At the start of 2003, Premier became an IEE Endorsed Training Provider for the provision of Software Training, Skills Training and Technology Seminars. Brought about by the commitment to quality and continuous programme improvement this accolade reflects the professionalism employed by Premier in the provision of customer training. For Ireland, we have also become a Registered Training Provider with the IEI allowing us to clearly illustrate our continued dedication to the provision of skills training in the region.

The present day

The beginning of 2006 brings exciting times for Premier EDA Solutions. We have recently launched our new website, which incorporates new features such as customer success stories as well as a simplified navigation system. This coincides with the latest release from Altium, called Altium Designer 6 , this new product is a complete electronic product development system, including schematic capture, PCB layout an system-on-FPGA capabilities.

A unique blend of products and services

Over the past 12 years, Premier's reputation and customer base has grown dramatically. We now have a unique portfolio of Altium software products, training and skills solutions.  No other EDA vendor or distributor has such an offering. No other EDA vendor or distributor is able to provide such a wide ranging service to it's customers.