Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Invensys Customer Conference There are several news announcements made here at the Invensys Process Systems User Conference. First is an enhanced InFusion enterprise control system by adding Avantis.CM technology to provide the ability to collect real-time information from more plant sources including from third-party applications. InFusion Condition Manager also contains tools for analyzing and contextualizing the data and applies an expert rule set that first triggers and then manages the appropriate operations, engineering or maintenance actions. Next, it has signed a sales and marketing agreement with Cutler Technology Corp., a San Antonio, Texas developer of advanced process control applications, to become a global re-seller and a certified implementer for CTC's patented Adaptive Dynamic Matrix Controller (ADMC) technology. The company did note that SimSci-Esscor's Connoisseur multivariable predictive controller will remain Invensys' preferred APC solution for central station and industrial power plants. Avantis announced a new business system integration module for the Avantis.PRO enterprise asset management (EAM) software application. The new module, developed in conjunction with Microsoft, will provide standard integration between Avantis.PRO R4.1 and Microsoft Dynamics AX Release 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics GP Professional 9.0 business management applications. Avantis also announced enhancements to its Avantis.DSS web-based decision support solution. New capabilities versus its current offering include: Wider selection of parameters and functions that provide increased detail for analysis of progress More options for creating personal key performance indicators (KPIs) Deeper drill-through capabilities for cost analysis Increased capabilities for developing trending insight 12:46:16 PM    comment []

Use of AW articles A situation was just referred to me about a strange marketing campaign email blast that went out recently. This is another company trying to emulate a well-known direct selling model with aggressive marketing comparing pricing with a market leader's products. This is the second instance of this copy-cat model I've seen this year--and neither seems to understand the care one needs to take when doing aggressive marketing. In this case (and I'm not giving them publicity by naming them) they do the usual comparison of their product's price vs. the competitor's product price. Unfortunately, they did at least two things wrong. First, it appears to me that they may have mis-represented their competitor's product and claims. That's not good--and I'm sure that there will be communications between them. Second, if you received an email with this tactic and saw an Automation World article inserted in it, this was done without our knowledge let alone agreement. We in no way endorse any company's marketing claims. I hope no one mis-understood this situation. And, if you are in marketing, please read our legal page before trying this tactic. 10:06:50 AM    comment []