29 November 2007

Cisco factor in Wireless Wars

By Jim Pinto

Most companies in the automation industry recognize wireless as a new “inflection point,” which will generate significant growth and market share for leaders. The Wireless Wars are marketing ploys to gain market share through the differentiation of standards that support the majors’ market strategies.

It has been a little more than three months since Honeywell unveiled its “OneWireless” solution at the Honeywell User Group meeting. Honeywell President Jack Bolick said, “OneWireless was the only wireless network a plant needs.” The implication was users who adopted other vendors’ solutions would find themselves having to manage a plethora of protocols and several potentially conflicting wireless networks.

Emerson, which was already selling its HART-based wireless networking, was the primary target Honeywell was going against. Honeywell suggested by focusing solely on field device networking, Emerson was not giving its customers the opportunity to take advantage of the wider possibilities offered by Honeywell’s much broader OneWireless in-plant wireless networking solutions.

Now Emerson has responded by announcing an alliance with Cisco, which offers users pretty much everything Honeywell’s OneWireless offers after the ISA100 standard hits the market, plus the added bonus of WirlessHART-based wireless networking now.

Cisco, the mainstream networking “big gorilla,” is once again (previous alliance with GE-Fanuc fizzled) eyeing the industrial automation arena. In April, Cisco announced an “alliance” with Rockwell, with plans to develop what they called a “common technology view.” CISCO sees the growing convergence of the IT and automation worlds and hopes to extend its reach from the corporate level to the plant, not quite recognizing the intricacies in the fragmented industrial markets.

This is clearly a marketing game of ping-pong, with CISCO playing all sides. Honeywell must soon come up with a response to the latest Emerson initiative. Maybe they should simply focus on the real prize: Gaining market-share.

Related links:

• The Industrial Wireless Wars:
  http://www.automation.com/sitepages/pid3161.php
• InTech e-News - The wild, wacky, wireless wars:
  http://r.listpilot.net/c/isa/1rp4rd1/16thz
• Alliances keeps CISCO moving up the application stack:
  http://209.73.224.83/current_issues/2007/july/compinfra5.asp

Behind the byline

Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and founder of Action Instruments. You can e-mail him at jim@jimpinto.com or view his writings at www.JimPinto.com. Read the Table of Contents of his book, Pinto’s Points, at www.jimpinto.com/writings/points.html.