Last Thursday, we attended the Rockwell Automation Fair, which was well-attended as usual. I was intrigued to learn how Rockwell Automation has been playing a leading role in enabling both users and OEMs to reap the benefits of automation and connectivity. With EtherNet/IP as the primary communications protocol, devices and controllers are able to communicate to the enterprise through monitoring applications, real-time motion control, high availability applications, safety and more. Rockwell Automation is relying on time synchronization to enable EtherNet/IP to perform real-time applications without the concerns of latency and deterministic performance—typical of standards Ethernet TCP/IP.
Rockwell Automation is connecting all these applications without the need for two networks. Instead of placing one network at the device level communicating the device to controller and another to communicate with the enterprise network, this “efficient solution” thereby saves companies money, lowers their operational TCO and empowers them with the ability to be achieve greater flexibility, productivity, agility and visibility into their operations. I am still searching for another vendor that can offer such an elegant (simple did not seem appropriate) but powerful solution, but I am sure others will be following Rockwell’s lead.
Bottom line – Rockwell Automation, and its Encompass Partners, are empowering OEMs and end users to leverage the latest technology and standards to compete and succeed in an increasingly tough global economy.
There are several networks serving the needs of industrial automation customers across many different industries, and most will continue to do so, but VDC’s data from over 500 respondents has indicated the primary winners in the network battle. EtherNet/IP has taken the lead in North America and as for Europe, I will let you take a guess. But here’s a hint—the main proponent of this network is no stranger to VDC.
There were lots of key industry players in attendance, many of whom are deeply involved in industrial networking and factory automation initiatives. I am keen to learn about their success, their challenges and the questions keeping them up at night. Those are the types of issues and questions we are looking to raise and hopefully address during the publication of our 2010 Industrial Networking Market Intelligence program.
Our goal of the research is to provide suppliers and their relevant stakeholders with insightful and actionable market intelligence that will enable them to make product development decisions, fine tune channel strategies and make the type of strategic decisions that provide a competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive market. We are closing out the last round of web surveys and are hoping to obtain well over 500 respondents from which to conduct meaningful analysis. We will be sharing top level findings from those results in the coming weeks – so please keep an eye out for them!
I certainly welcome your comments, questions and/or success stories on how your networking products and/or software solutions (and corresponding network protocol(s)) are doing, and how they are the “best solution” for the customers that you serve in your target markets. I would love to hear from users or channel partners that can share their success (or, hopefully not, horror) stories on how deploying networking in your operations has enabled you to produce more, save more or provide better customer service.
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