Friday, June 8, 2007

Rockwell's process growth My friend Jim Pinto has a different take on the Rockwell purchase of ICS/Triplex than mine. I always look first at technology and product strategy; Jim looks at the dollars. That's probably why I'm working and he's an angel investor ;-)  He thinks Rockwell paid a premium for the company. While Rockwell isn't talking right now during the actual purchase process, I believe that it really was looking to bolster its growing process industry presence with a viable safety solution. The rest of ICS is probably expendable, although the integration part might be valuable as well. What I'll ask when they can talk is what the roadmap is for integrating and selling this new (to them) solution. If it paid a premium, then that just goes to show how important growth in the process business is to Rockwell's future growth. Keith Nosbusch has told me that there are two important things--information and process. Information includes software, but I'm coming to the conclusion that that is not a huge business--important, but not huge. Expanding into the process business, on the other hand, can be huge. Look at the competition. Siemens bought Moore to gain entre, while GE Fanuc seems to be following the same path as Rockwell--but seems to be lagging behind right now. I keep reading Walt Boyes talking about GE Fanuc's coming process initiative. It'd better step it up a little. 7:24:03 AM    comment []

Who's bigger Carl over at the PTO Blog has been busy debunking stuff lately (in between preparing for the general assembly to be held at the end of July). He picked up on my post about a new EtherCat headquarters for North America and noticed that the organization bills itself as the world's largest Industrial Ethernet organization. The reason I'm posting this exchange is a tip to my press relations friends. First, you might notice in my post that I don't mention that. Editors don't like unsubstantiated superlatives--first, best, fastest, largest and the like. We like facts. Of course, even quoting membership numbers sometimes masks other facts--as Carl points out. As part of the Ethernet debate, I recently saw a conversation (which I've lost) about various flavors of industrial implementations with the conclusion that "standard, commercial" Ethernet is not a player. Then Carl has quoted a study done in England with some network specs. The thing is, I have interviewed systems integrators and users who have implemented plain vanilla Ethernet in industrial automation and are happy. Jitter numbers notwithstanding, I've interviewed integrators using EtherNet/IP on motion applications and are happy. I'll always say: check your application, ask to see similar applications working (and find out how they did it) before buying, work with people you trust and finally check your application. You'll also want to make sure that there are plenty of component suppliers for your needs. I love competition, and there is plenty of good competition in the networking market right now. 7:08:10 AM    comment []