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Acquisitions: Rockwell Automation buys ICS Triplex
May 24, 2007

Last Tuesday, visitors from Rockwell Automation came to the Control Engineering publishing complex to bring us up to date on their efforts of expanding their presence in traditional process industries as a process control supplier. Rick Dolezal, Mike Vernak, and Scott Anthony gave us a briefing on their DCS migration solutions and where the whole process control thing stands. (Karen Leinberger from PSB was along to keep them on message.) (Rick Dolezal did a podcast which is available online.)

One of the Control Engineering staffers noted that their efforts so far, aimed at food, biofuels, pharmaceuticals, etc., were "process lite," and asked if Rockwell had plans for heavy process such as oil, gas, and petrochem. Rick admitted that these are much harder doors to break down given the companies that already occupy that space, but we shouldn't rule anything out.

The news came out today that Rockwell has purchased ICS Triplex, which according to the release, is "a leading global supplier of critical control and safety solutions to process industries. With 40 years of experience, ICS Triplex develops, delivers and maintains advanced products and solutions for high availability, fault-tolerant applications in process industry segments worldwide."

Well, this acquisition should serve to move Rockwell to the other side of that door without breaking anything since ICS Triplex is already in that heavy process segment. It should also serve to remove any doubt that Rockwell is very serious about gaining ground in all process industry segments. They want to be known as a DCS company, not just a PLC company.

Posted by Peter Welander on May 24, 2007 | Comments (0)