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skoffman

Rockwell helps Wonderware Create Their Own Worst Nightmare

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Today marks a new milestone for one of Wonderware's biggest mistakes. Rockwell Automation, Inc. inked a pact to acquire Incuity Software, Inc. Incuity Software used to develop for Wonderware in this space, and has a built in need to put the screws to their old partner. Hold on to your hats, folks, it's about to get UGLY! Incuity used to be called DataWorks, and developed Active Factory for Wonderware, a highly successful EMI product that Wonderware brand labeled for years. A couple years ago, Wonderware decided the business situation favored developing their own code versus purchasing DataWorks, and they cut DataWorks out of the picture to fend for themselves. Wonderware's replacement product, still called Active Factory, was then rolled out as a replacement to less the rave reviews. Alas, poor DataWorks was left to fend for themselves without even a goodby kiss. Does one suppose that having your entire sales channel and revenue stream removed would leave some bitterness behind? Hint: One does. Fast forward almost two years to today, and you just HAVE to admire Rockwell! They have just helped their position immensely, and have acquired a software company that needs NOTHING except marketing and an infusion of money. Congrats, Rockwell, you've actually impressed me on this one. As for you, Wonderware, isn't this what they call penny wise, pound foolish; ie, don't you wish you'd paid the premium for DataWorks? _____________ Used with permission from Roger MacClintock from here.

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Very interesting commentary - thanks for sharing it. I'd be curious to get more details from the author on how Rockwell helped it's position immensely. I believe that "compatibility" with their existing projects is significant to the usefulness of the authors implications of such a move. Keep in mind that in this focused nitch industry, a company of Rockwell's size might buy out a much smaller company with a dangerous project just to get rid of them. That said, my opinion is that the reuse of "good" code will benefit all. It's too common that that the big players in this industry invent their own half-baked implementation of existing projects. Expect comments on this on my blog after more research. I'd love to hear other opinions on this.

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I agree with your point that compatibility, and more importantly, the ability to seamlessly exchange information is one of the most critical aspects to the end user. What you'll find, if you take a time slice from 1990 to the present day, is Rockwell has never been held back by a lack of integration or compatibility. In fact, Rockwell has been able to increase market share despite the very clear fact they orphan users with old code and no upgrade path to the new product. There are many examples of this, but let's just take one and examine it for brevity's sake. Since 1990, Rockwell has had no less then five automation change management products (systems that allow users to manage changes in PLCs and other devices). They include Highway Patrol, RS Guardian, Control Guardian, RSMACC, and most recently RS Asset Center. Each code base was entirely different, typically purchased from another company, and in Asset Center's case the code was developed in Germany, and purchased from a company called GEPA Soft. Change Management systems, regardless of vendor, are characterized by fairly in-depth installations, a bit of culture change in day to day operations, and frequent updates to keep up with changing PLC editing packages and capabilities. Systems range in installed price from $10K to $400k or more depending on the size of the facility, and implementation can be a significant portion of the investment. In not one case has Rockwell provided a migration path for current users that was anything but starting from scratch. Despite this glaring gotcha for end users, they still manage to sell product. Remember the old saying, "Nobody gets fired for buying Rockwell." It's safe to assume that Rockwell's purchase of a very well written package like Incuity will result in some customers of Rockwell's Plant Metrics, RS View SE, and other products finding themselves dead ended in the near future. However, it ain't time to get in the cellar, loyal Rockwell stockholders! The spin doctors at Rockwell have a proven and enviable ability to position each dead-end as a wonderful new opportunity to make significant gains in operations. On the Wonderware side, they had the opportunity to purchase Incuity/DataWorks, and chose not to do it. Rockwell's current product has a history of losing out to Wonderware and other vendors. Now Rockwell has a product that even some portion of the Wonderware customer base believe is better then Wonderware's replacement product. So Wonderware not only bore the cost of redevelopment, they also gave Rockwell a jump start, and most of the folks at Incuity know Wonderware inside and out. If you were to have a candid conversation with the business folks at either company you would find agreement that in the US, they are each other's biggest competitors. This purchase just can't be a good thing if your logo has teal in it. Rockwell's amazing, and I mean AMAZING US market share in PLCs and other automation layer devices allows them to continue to push siloed software that lacks integration across the MES / EMI layer, and still post big wins. The conclusion is simple. Until customers start pushing for proof behind the Marketing baloney PRIOR to making a purchasing decision, Rockwell is going to make significant sales, just because they have a product in the category. On the positive side, unlike the hard core automation layer devices, today's information exchange standards allow customers the choice of just about any MES/EMI type package, and they can realistically choose based on the package's capabilities, versus worrying about whether or not it can communicate. Let's hope customers do choose based on capability, and not on brand, because otherwise new features and game changing technologies aren't going to be profitable, and neither are we. R. MacClintock via S. Koffman ___________________________________

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WOW - such insight! Information Exchange is much more precise and in line with my intent. I've been baffled and impressed for nearly a decade with Rockwell's "amazing (NA) market share" - your old IBM adage is as apt as the analysis that they've had a history of orphaning users who generally keep returning. This is a case where a lack of education clearly favors the encumbant. It continues to surprise me that even Wonderware, the longtime niche Industry King, doesn't carry that misplaced warm feeling of longevity that devout Rockwell fans are confident in. They will tell you that what they're paying a premium for has been around for 20 years and will work into the future - oops are we confusing AB PLCs with software? In what other industry do you go looking for old software? Have they forgotten getting "had" the last several times or about the expensive RSSQL or Plantmetrics bookmark sitting on their shelves? "Yes, a Panelview Plus is nicer - you'd want to re-write your applications anyways", "Supervisory Edition is completely re-written to be a distributed application - surely that's more important than an upgrade path", "You've never heard of FactoryTalk, it's the new standard, no it won't work with your existing system, but it's for sale". Users are confident in the quality because of the size of the customer base - or think that it must get better for that same reason. I've spoken with numerous users who are unhappy with the product, but assume that the competition "must be worse" and users who "know" that you don't have to match the brand of hardware and software, but don't really believe it. Shareholders be glad - this impossible phenomena doesn't seem to be going and it's reinforced by corporate standards. I like to think of Rockwell like Microsoft in recent OS battles. Instead of the best dang office suite their secret weapon is a really great PLC hardware platform. A blog post highlighted the fact that a staggering percentage of Apple users gladly spent over $500 in recent OS upgrades (Tiger to Panther to Leopard, no discounts) whereas every Microsoft user I know would balk at a $250 copy of their latest. The difference, the blogger pointed out, is that your programs and devices will still work on your "new" Mac, you even get a few new useful utilities and interface upgrades. The equivalent Windows upgrade is sure to be a gamble - you can bet on the fact that things will be different. Of the list of advertised feature ideas, the ones that made it versus those that didn't will baffle you. Whereas the field, Apple, focuses on useful minor upgrades, Microsoft is busy overkilling past deficiencies and re-inventing an interface that their public is happy with. This applies to Rockwell's software history. Think about it. The only point on which I beg to differ is your 2nd to last paragraph (though I agree with your message delivered in the last 3). First, I'd claim that automation level communication standards are stronger than ever and meet customer needs. OPC has transformed from something that vendors supported just because, to a platform allowing any product to talk to nearly any piece of hardware. Software vendors include increased native driver support, some open source exists, and there's always Modbus. What information exchange standards are you referring to? That's where I feel this industry is really lacking. There's no cross platform support for FactoryTalk or Archestra and OPC UA remains more of an idea. SQL Databases are the greatest common denominator in the absence of an XML/web services model. To my understanding the big guns, Oracle, SAP, and the like, don't have a foothold in this space. Frequent the forums here and you'll see that users still fight custom programming to facilitate data transfers. This is greatly efficient - if you happen to be Wal Mart sized with a team of full time programmers. This "stove piping" hurts the rest of us. The goal, as I see it, is a ubiquitous environment where everything you want is connected and additions are easy. Operators create product from a panel, accounting has real time visibility from their software application. The real challenge is, for example, allowing management to install a new reporting package from a different vendor and having it "hook" into the existing system without hundreds of hours of integration. That same day, a plant manager should be able to call up his regional manager and show him how to securely check it out from his remote site. That's why we need the capability driven, vendor neutral standards you describe. A lot of collaboration needs to occur to make this feasible.

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If you can't do it, buy it. This move by Rockwell makes sense to me, but in a lot of these cases, you lose a lot of the key players from the company you bought. Then you have a shell of the original company, since a lot of folk are not interested in being number 1,238,910 of the corporate machine, or don't like the unknown risk of finding out that there are already 10 product managers, and they don't need 11. (though the benefits are probably real good!) ...and that's before they can even really integrate the product, as well. I am not sure Wonderware should be all that worried...if you've ever used a Rockwell HMI/MES solution, which you figured should be good due to the Datasweep purchase in 05. (cheers for their PLC's though !)

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I don't know much about Wonderware, but when I saw their "HMI Reports" module I knew they can't be too savvy. You see, "HMI Reports" is actually a product called "Dream Report" which is the creation of French software developer Ocean Data Systems. I will never say anything bad about the people at ODS (dealt with them extensively and they are great for support, considering they're an ocean and a few time zones away), but quite frankly, their product just sucks. Their normal licensing system didn't work for on any of the computers at my last employer, and I had to get a USB dongle shipped from France just to get this product to validate. The biggest PITA though is the fact that Dream Report will, randomly, stop logging data. And getting it to talk to Rockwell OPC stuff can be a major pain (although this may be a problem more with Rockwell's interpretation of what OPC means, because Dream Report had no problem with Kepware). Anyway, the Dream Report product is a LOT better than it used to be, but it still isn't perfect. The interface is still buggy. Trying to do a multiple selection for example often results in your selection being copied and offset on the page for some reason. And as far as the data collection goes they're moving away from MS Access and migrating more towards SQL (IMO Access has NO business in the industrial environment, period). Bottom line is it's a package that is relatively cheap (we paid about $1,000 for it), and simple to learn and use. And when it works, it's great. But it's been through a very long and painful process of working bugs out, and ODS quite frankly has a long way to go. The thing about HMI reports is that (from looking from the screenshots) it's an OLD version of Dream Report, which means Wonderware is basically shipping a re-branded reporting module missing a few years worth of bug fixes and updates.

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That is why I don't buy SCADA from big boys any more. I use mySCADA

 

Innovations and perfection is not with Rockwell or Wonderware people any more, industry has moved.

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