ScotlandIS member, PACE Anti-Piracy, interviews Milo De Sorcellis, CTO of NEWTWEN, a company that is accelerating growth and technological innovation in the electrification industry.
Milo speaks with the PACE team about implementing their iLok licensing tool for their Digital Twin on Edge Computing technology using MATLAB.
What is Newtwen? Tell us about the company.
Newtwen is a deep tech startup. We started in 2020 in Italy as a spinoff of the University of Padua. Our staff is comprised of industrial engineers, electrical engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists. During our PhD research activities we decided to go beyond academia and focus on emerging technology products. So we started a software company called Newtwen.
We focused initially on the electrification of the automotive industry. We introduced a new technology, which is actually software for generating other software, which we call “Digital Twin on Edge Computing”.
This is a multiphase simulation software that is used by humans to develop a virtual prototype of a product in order to create early concept and simulation designs that will understand the behavior in a virtual environment of components so that during the pre-development phase, designs are accurate. We develop virtual modes – digital twins – for the product itself.
We think that this is revolutionary and above all – necessary. Various industries are leaning towards this kind of software and the digitalization of components and we want to be on the forefront of this trend.
How has the reception been around this concept and what you’ve been doing? Have you been talking to various automotive manufacturers or people that do parts for automotive manufacturing?
The reception has been good. We are very active in Germany where OEM companies like Cintia, a producer of components for electric motors, power converters and power electronics are based. They, as well as other companies, are very interested in this technology, because the supply chain is going through a radical transformation. Software now plays a very important role. They want to push the performance of their components to the limit and offer a competitive and compelling product to the customer that is the first choice in the supply chain, so it makes sense to offer something that is not just limited to hardware, but also software.
Tell us what Newtwen’s vision is for the future
The vision is to become a leader in this technology. We want to give companies the capability to adopt AI and machine learning and digitalize their products with digital twins.
The sector is resilient to change and disruption – things have been done a certain way for a long time. There are always concerns about safety implementation and resourcing energy. Because they use up a lot of internal resources, it’s not easy to put together. Things like industrial automation for example is an area where we can make a difference. This is where we would like to close the gap.
Tell us a bit about MATLAB and the fit that it has with Newtwen’s workflow.
We built our MVP with MATLAB by MathWorks and then introduced it to customers. MathWorks has steadily developed MATLAB and it has become much more robust in the last ten years, so it was easy to create an MVP. PACE Anti-Piracy has developed support for MATLAB, with copy protection and a license management platform, so we knew we were supported. It was the perfect match to develop something complex from a software point of view, and also rapid enough to produce something for early adopters.
Visit the MATLAB Integration page to learn more about how to protect and securely distribute your MATLAB project with PACE.
Why did you end up using PACE Anti-Piracy solutions?
We were set to distribute our first software product and had customers ready for testing, which was a big milestone. Our focus was on a secure distribution toolchain, notably a license manager for our MATLAB application which was crucial for protecting our intellectual property. We didn’t have much experience in this area and we wanted to be very careful in not having any security risks in terms of distribution
We found that PACE’s iLok products were well suited, because they were launching focused product technology customized for MATLAB. We were impressed by its ease of use and the exceptional customer support PACE Anti-Piracy provided that addressed all of our issues. PACE helped us feel confident and secure in our software distribution process.
What were some of the key challenges that PACE Anti-Piracy solved for you?
Protection. We wanted to be sure there was good protection technology behind the software. The most complicated part is the function within the toolchain. After the software activation we needed to provide a software license check and all these little pieces inside the toolchain, so that when the client receives the software they are able to use the software in a smooth way.
PACE Anti-Piracy offers a very good backend. They have a portal where I can be the administrator of the licenses. They also have these very nice cloud based license checks. This was very helpful in rapidly putting all the pieces in place.
What was it like shipping that first PACE Anti-Piracy enabled licenses to the first customers. Were you confident it was going to go smoothly?
We started with a customer that we had a good relationship with. We knew the engineers in the company were familiar with using the software so we felt comfortable from the start.
Typically, organizations in the industry have their network protected. So it was just a matter of activating a couple of whitelisted IP addresses in order to be able to check the license and activate the license of the product the first time. We had to iterate a little bit because the topic is always security. Everything went smoothly thanks to PACE Anti-Piracy products.
It sounds like there was cause for celebration!
It was a very nice milestone to have our first customer that was using our software. And actually this week we successfully closed our first support ticket.
Great. Congratulations! Those milestones make a big difference. Looks like you’re really starting to grow.
We are and it’s exciting. It’s a different approach for us. We started working in consultancy and now we’re shifting toward being a software house that develops and distributes software.
Do you think that Newtwen could do what it does without PACE Anti-Piracy, given what you just told us?
I don’t think so. I think it’s the perfect match in my opinion. I’m very confident that this year we will be able to distribute multiple software licenses and it will go very smoothly because of PACE Anti-Piracy. We knew PACE Anti-Piracy had a great reputation. I would say there is nothing else out there that is as good or as easy to use.
If you were talking to someone who was in a similar situation as your company, would you recommend PACE Anti-Piracy?
Yes. Definitely yes. If someone is working in deep tech not to mention a startup and they are developing software technology such as an MVP in the early stage of their development, I think PACE Anti-Piracy is the best choice. I would absolutely recommend it.
About NEWTWEN
NEWTWEN provides real-time digital replicas of physical assets based on predetermined mathematical models. Our monitoring software solutions based on Digital Twins allow for predicting temperature values on critical points where it is not possible to physically measure them. Our vision is to accelerate sustainable growth and technological innovation in the electrification industry. Our mission is to become a leader in the development of software tools that automatically generate embeddable, real-time, and adaptive Digital Twins On Chip. www.newtwen.com