“Being part of the Schneider Electric family has implied big challenges, but also big opportunities, particularly with the R&D investment in their roadmap. Before the acquisition, keeping profitable was in the detriment of R&D for us, but now $20 M have been commited to Citect in the last two years, which allows us to accelerate developments and our commitment and delivery to the market,” said Vice-President Scott Wooldridge last Monday during the opening ceremony.
Wooldridge focused on Citect’s performance in the region, with Frost & Sullivan’s recent recognition of the company’s leadership position in the SCADA market. He explained that Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region in automation in the world.
“We have maintained and grown the position in the Oceania region,” he emphasised.
Citect offered the following percentages for the SCADA market in the Asia Pacific region:
- Citect 25.4%
- Siemens 17.8%
- GE Fanuc 16.3%
- Wonderware 15.2%
- Rockwell 13.9%
- lnduSoft 5.8%
Mr. Wooldridge claimed that Citect are on track to be in the top 3 for SCADA sales globally.
He also announced a new key project with Anglo Platinum, covering 18 sites and including concentrators, smelters and refiners. The focus will be on modelling, reporting and analytics, metal balance, maintenance management, event based integration, production planning, plant scheduling and blending, material tracking and genealogy, etc.
Citect’s solutions strategy responds to the market’s requirements for faster and simpler implementation, validated data management, and seamless integration into decision support infrastructures.
“This data that is out of the control system is integral to planning and maintenance, and needs to be shared and remain accessible to other platforms. We must drive productivity improvement out of that validated data.”
New products were announced, including CitectSCADA 7.1 (with support for Windows Vista) and Ampla 4.0
Their roadmap shows their commitment to the product, as they are continuing to invest on R&D and believe they can further improve their -and their clients’- systems.
“It reflects our understanding of the market trends and allows our clients to question our direction before we commit to building it,” said Stephen Flannigan, Global Director for SCADA. “We need a roadmap because the market is always changing and as certain technologies become obsolete, new ones are researched.”
During this ceremony, LogiCamms was announced as the 2008 Oceania CIP of the year.
CitectCONNECTS finished yesterday, after three days of technical conferences, customer presentations and sessions of ‘technical speed dating’.