ISA Day Three
Reflecting on the ISA Expo, it was hard to tell what interested attendees just by watching where groups congregated. Some booths seemed pretty busy while others didn't. Often it was hard to tell if the booth was full of customers or employees. A few exhibitors brought a lot of people to the show. A strategy that's been developing over the past four years for exhibitors has been to cut costs by renting a piece of other companies' booths. Trade organizations are a natural and there were plenty--HART Foundation, Profibus Trade Organization, Fieldbus Foundation, Modbus/IDA all sold spots for members to have a small kiosk and therefore a presence at the show.
Microsoft has used the strategy for years. It looks like it has a big presence, but I'd bet that it spends little overall. They only bring a few people and rent out many spots for their partners. There have been some major companies over the past few years whose only presence at a show has been a kiosk in the Microsoft booth. Presentations at the booth have always been a good draw, and this year was no exception with many taking advantage of a place to sit while seeing what's new with Microsoft.
Another presentation that seemed popular was at the National Instruments booth. There were always people listening to presentations there. NI, by the way, showed its "soft motion" product--just released a couple of weeks ago. It now has a pretty broad line of motion, as well as integrated vision and motion, offerings.
The FDT group announced a conformance testing program. Not familiar with FDT? Well, it's a device definition layer that resides above the networking layer for fieldbuses. Invensys appears to be leading this effort with Endress & Hauser. ABB and Rockwell support the effort to some degree. Noticably missing? That would be Siemens (who has invested heavily in solutions using Profibus) and Emerson (likewise with Foundation Fieldbus). Some companies have felt at a competitive disadvantage if they build their entire asset management strategy around one of those other fieldbuses. Even though both are open organizations, the feeling privately expressed to me by many is that they are run by their respective champions. Thus FDT is positioned as a fieldbus neutral solution where products can be made that can then reside on any fieldbus. It's an interesting world.
6:11:45 AM 
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