Greg McMillan over at the Modeling and Control blog has another excellent analysis of what are the largest opportunities in process control. Thought we had it all solved? Think again and check this one out. Hint: Integrating process tuning and performance.
Interesting news, but I don’t think it’ll change much in the automation landscape. I’m not sure to what degree GE and Fanuc have integrated technologies over the last several years. Fanuc will concentrate on its core strength in CNC products and GE Intelligent Platforms will continue to run its industrial automation, process control, software and embedded computing products. The companies expect the transaction to be completed by the end of this year. The partnership was established in 1986.
Fanuc Honorary Chairman Dr. Seiuemon Inaba said, “Our joint venture has achieved great success toward its original mission, which was to cooperate on the global growth and technical development of the PLC and CNC business. Over this time period, markets and opportunities also have changed dramatically, and both companies further expanded into adjacent segments. Today’s market conditions are such that itâo[dot accent]s imperative we pursue these expanded opportunities, and while we have achieved great things together, it’s in both our best interests that we focus our efforts on industry opportunities unique to our respective companies and that will deliver greater benefits to both our companies.”
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms CEO Maryrose Sylvester said, “GE could not have asked for better partners than Dr. Inaba and FANUC. GE is proud of what our companies have achieved together — both the industry expertise and success across our product portfolios. For GE, this change will mean a continued, intense focus on serving our customers around the world while continuing to invest in significant growth platforms like process control systems, enterprise and automation software and embedded computing as we continue to build further expertise around the GE vertical infrastructure segments.”
Under the terms of the agreement:
GE retains the software, services, embedded systems and control systems businesses globally. The company will be known as GE Intelligent Platforms, and will be led by Sylvester. Fanuc retains the global CNC business. Sylvester added, “Our top priority is a smooth completion of transition and continuity for all customers, business partners and employees. We are committed to delivering our customer commitments in every segment of our business.”
Robert Scoble is the one single person who put Twitter on the map. His evangelizing from SXSW a couple of years ago created the buzz. Over the past year or so, he has switched to FriendFeed. Now, he just went back to his blog. Here’s his blog post about problems with Twitter. Here’s a response from Dave Winer (father of blogging).
Like Scoble, I followed everyone who followed me (well, almost, there were the porn “girls” sites that I ignored). But most of my followers were self-proclaimed marketing gurus in “social media” or “search engine optimization.” They were just trying to get more followers. To me, it’s not the number of followers, but who they are. Take a look at any public Twitter site and you can see who’s following. A quick scan is revealing.
I’ve been using Twitter for conversations among people I know. Some point to links to things of interest to me–that’s OK. But many are blatantly self-promotional. Or are simply links designed to drive page view numbers. The best use of Twitter was by a guy at a cable company who decided to monitor it for complaints about his company, then do something about it. I haven’t heard of any other company doing that, but I hope many do. Otherwise, I’m not sure. Twitter is not an open platform, and the recent demise of URL shortener tr.im reveals additional problems with the Twitter trustworthiness.
I’m at NI Week in Austin, having just gotten my MacBook Pro back from the Apple store last Saturday. Evidently my old Website at http://radio.weblogs.com/0133292 is closed. I got an email from them that they were closing the end of December, but I have not been able to get on the site to update it. Hopefully most people will eventually find me here. I’m on a two-week trial run at SquareSpace. It looks better than Word Press, so we’ll give it a go.
I’ll be working on site design, but I wanted to start posting. It’s been over a week since I posted.
