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More on process industry invasions
October 25, 2007
While I was at the GE Fanuc user group earlier this week, I spent a lot of time talking to various folks about Proficy Process and how the company plans on making greater inroads into traditional process industries. The rationale is that there is a lot of GE Fanuc hardware and software in these plants anyway, so it makes sense to create the systems necessary to tie it all together. It makes perfect sense, and there is little reason to believe they can't pull it off, at least to some extent.
It occurred to me and a few others I talked to that this is much the same approach Rockwell Automation is using in its effort to gain more business in the same industries. Rockwell/AB also has a lot of hardware deployed, and is working to tie it all together.
Rockwell has been working at this a bit longer than GE, but only by a few months. In that time Rockwell has made an impressive effort to make strategic acquisitions to bolster some areas of process industry weakness. Last July Rockwell Automation bought ICS Triplex to gain safety system expertise and create a path into the oil and gas industry.
This morning RA announced that it is going to buy Pavilion, another very strategic purchase and lever in process industries, particularly biofuels, which it has identified as one of its target industries.
I'm not trying to compare Rockwell and GE in this context. While their efforts are similar superficially, they won't be competing with each other head-to-head since both companies are going into places where they already have an installed base of hardware. This will likely change going forward, but for the time being, both are going for low hanging fruit, and this will keep them out of each others way to a large extent. GE certainly has the wherewithal to make acquisitions should they decide to and if they can find the right targets.
Watch this space for more on both companies as they seek to navigate these treacherous waters.
Posted by Peter Welander on October 25, 2007 | Comments (1)
In response to: More on process industry invasions
David commented:
As we saw Gary Mintchell discuss, I would like to see someone compare these approaches. The marketing literature leaves a lot to be desired.