For my second trip to Nashville’s Opryland hotel in three weeks, I’m at the Invensys Operations Management OpsManage ’11 user conference. The 1,225 attendees were greeted with a completely different experience than those of just a few years ago. From conference organization to a buzz of excitement in the hall.
Pace of business was the morning theme. Meeting the challenges of today’s increased face of business requires empowering people at the edge according to President and CEO Sudipta Bhattacharya. To accomplish this requires extending the reach of information. Invensys has responded by learning from the world of technologies outside the immediate automation domain by incorporating mobility and workflow technologies.
Showing off the renewed investment the company has made in its core businesses under Bhattacharya, Product Marketing Vice President Steve Garbrecht demonstrated the new intelligent marshaling product line within the Foxboro/DCS arena. The competitive advantage of Invensys’ modules is that one module is remotely configurable for digital I/O, analog I/O, pulse and Hart. Other advances include moving virtualization from VMware to Microsoft HyperV and the new System Platform 2012 that I wrote about last week including Foxboro Control Software 3.0.
The net result is that although Invensys Operations Management is the smallest of the majors, it is one of two or three showing substantial momentum in the process control area.
I’m now at a press conference where Rick Morse is presenting on “Modernization” where he just noted that Foxboro has been in the automation business since the beginning of the industrial age, but now they are going forward into the information age.
I’m sure more details will be forthcoming as I spend the next day-and-a-half here.
