When I wrote last Tuesday about the Schneider Electric / ODVA announcement being major, here is a sense of how major. I had about four conference calls regarding it. Between that news and some other news I'll write about next, getting some Automation World Webcasts organized plus interviewing for my May article (now past due), seems like I spent the whole week on the phone.
I talked with Katherine Voss, executive director of ODVA, Joe Kann, vice president of global business development of Rockwell Automation and a team from Schneider Electric that included Andy Gravitt, vice president of automation, Geoff Walker, director of automation and controls and Fred Cohn, director of marketing for Ethernet products.
Gravitt said, "This is a big deal globally for us." Voss said this is an important follow up to the agreement with Sercos who accepted CIP (common industrial protocol, the technology behind EtherNet/IP) Safety as part of Sercos III. Kann reiterated how important EtherNet/IP is to Rockwell--in fact it is the underlying technology in its control platforms for communication.
The announcement (to recap) was that Schneider Electric has decided to upgrade its membership level in ODVA to "principal" from "regular." Voss explained that the principal category was recently created partly replacing the "founder" category. Rockwell Automation, Omron Electronics, Eaton (at the time Eaton/Cutler-Hammer) and Hitachi were the founding members of the Open DeviceNet Vendors Association. In 2004 Cisco was added--necessitating the name change to principal. Principal members have the privilege of nominating a person from the company for the board of directors and another person to sit on the technical review board.
In addition to the membership commitment, Schneider announced its roadmap for the future from Modbus TCP will be EtherNet/IP and the CIP networks.
Cohn said, "This continues and extends our philosophy begun as Transparent Factory and continued as Transparent Ready, which is standard, unmodified Ethernet in manufacturing. This adds more services and protocols to the Modbus TCP foundation. Modbus is a good messaging protocol, but we needed to move to a higher speed, synced network with expanded profiles for safety and motion. We'll be getting this into the PLCs first followed by adding different services later." Schneider has four motion initiatives in process right now.
There will be a special interest group (SIG) established by ODVA to work on the protocol coordination to encapsulate Modbus packets within CIP so that they may be passed on the CIP network. When this is finished and adopted, then a test procedure can be established. Products can then be manufactured and tested for conformance. Schneider expects products supporting EtherNet/IP on the market in 2008.
Gravitt added, "This action brings together market forces of the two leaders in installed base with a standard Ethernet solutions. Our customers with Modbus TCP can feel assured that their technology investment is secure in the future."
On last caveat from Gravitt, "This announcement in no way signals a diminishment of our commitment to the CAN and AS-interface networks."
One last technical remark. The press release and conversations were peppered with the comment "unmodified Ethernet." When I tried to pin them down, no one would commit to a specific example of a "modified" Ethernet. At the very least this refers to Ethernet TCP/IP exactly like standard commercial (office) Ethernet. No special chips or protocols that don't ride on the TCP/IP packets. The closest comment I got was from Voss, who said that some networks "to take full advantage of their network" require modifications to the standard network.
2:04:35 PM 
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