Wonderware looks to future growth

The next frontier for automation: Africa.
“India, China and Eastern Europe are still forces, but a huge opportunity is in Africa,” said Mike Bradley Sr., Wonderware’s president during the final keynote address celebrating the software provider’s 20th anniversary at WonderWorld 2007 in Las Vegas. After looking at some demographics, he said, you can see the region will have one billion consumers coming of age in the next few years.
“The challenges are significant, but the opportunities are enormous,” he said.
While there is no real time line for when Africa will take off, Bradley said it could happen soon or it could take another 30 years or so.
In the near term, the key word for the automation industry remains change.
“We believe the global market will see profound changes in the next five years,” Bradley said.
The technology is there for end users to take advantage of it. It remains up to people to leverage their technology for maximum productivity. “Less than 10 years ago, manufacturing and IT didn’t even talk, now they are.”
In the coming years, communication will get even stronger.
“We believe manufacturers will have a closer collaboration with their customers,” Bradley said. Just think, “who would have thought you could have custom printed M&Ms purchased over the Internet for $50,” he said.
Bradley also talked about Wonderware’s newly launched InTouch 10.0 and System Platform 3.0 software.
“Easier to use software will break down barriers for engineers,” he said.
It’s all about graphics and InTouch 10.0 HMI software adds in Invensys’ ArchestrA graphics capability. This capability, along with Microsoft’s .NET, offers the potential to provide enterprise-wide visualization for real-time applications.
Development Studio brings together the engineering and IT departments to perform software application modeling, development, change management and deployment across InTouch, System Platform 3.0 and application modules. Development Studio can now deploy across devices running on Windows Mobile, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003.
System Platform 3.0 works with InTouch 10.0 by offering complete integration of ArchestrA application objects with ArchestrA graphics running inside InTouch HMI visualization.
“With this latest launch, we are not slowing down the pace, in fact we are going to accelerate the pace,” Bradley said. “Our intention is to allow you to add functionality as you need it. You can put in modules as you need them.”