Hexagon Live (HxGN) User Conference

​Hexagon held its annual conference to showcase plant design solutions (Intergraph Power, Process, & Marine (PP&M)), along with its other technology business units for Geosystems, Geospatial, Metrology, Security, Government, & Infrastructure, and Mining.

Ola' Rollen, CEO of Hexagon, a very dynamic and charismatic speaker, focused his keynote on Hexagon's quest to pursue the most advanced technology and innovation for the markets they serve. Hexagon's business model has consistently been to acquire companies with the most cutting edge technology. A good example of this is Leica Systems, part of the Geosystem business unit, and Intergraph PP& M engineering design tools. Leica Systems provides some of the most advanced technology in laser scanning and point cloud and geospatial surveying equipment, both hardware and software. This is especially beneficial for Intergraph PP&M, as it is able to leverage this technology from its sister companies in Geosystems and Geospatial to offer its customers a much more robust set of plant design solutions.

Gerhard Sallinger, President of Intergraph PP&M, provided a keynote that focused on Intergraph's dominance in the plant design space, where they currently hold around 42 percent of that market for design tools. Intergraph is strong in oil & gas, chemical, power generation, and marine (offshore and shipping). However, the big news of the day was the announcement by Salinger that PP&M was going into the BIM/AEC sector, and area that has not been one of its traditional areas. The interesting thing, however, is Intergraph has quietly been building its business in the area of BIM and infrastructure for some time now, especially by leveraging technologies from Geosystems and Geospatial. In a one-on-one discussion with Salinger, he remarked that Intergraph has been in BIM/AEC/Infrastructure for some time now, and this was a chance to make its entry into this space formal. There is no doubt that this is a shot across the bow of Bentley and Autodesk, who will be sure to take notice.

Patrick Holcomb, SVP for Global Business Development,  provided a more in depth look at Intergraph's customers and their stories. One of its success stories was Shell Global Engineering & Operations who recently have made Intergraph its primary EDT solution across global operations. Shell recently made the decision to go all in on Cloud solutions and deployment through its Shell Project Vantage. Intergraph's Smartplant Cloud platform will run Shell's Cloud deployment.

Hexagon is a very diverse in technology and industrial areas covered. Other than PP&M, our direct customer, we covered the Geosysystems and Geospatial sectors since some of those units are in technologies like laser scanning/point cloud and GIS, markets that ARC covers with Market Studies. As Intergraph moves more directly into the BIM/AEC/Infrastructure sector, it will continue to leverage these technologies like laser scanning, GIS and geospatial surveying, etc.

In covering the technology partner floor, it was apparently that drone technology has exploded. Not only are smart and autonomous drones surveying and monitoring utilities and infrastructure, but they are now being used even inside facilities like warehousing, plants, and large facilites, and of course physical security systems. There were about 3 times more drone companies on the floor than two years ago.

Intergraph has made a strong play into the owner-operator sector of the OPEX lifecycle with its SmartPlant Enterprise of Owner Operators (SPO). This represent a very robust portfolio that includes SPO Handover Solutions, SP Fusion, SPO Systems Completion Solutions, SPO Mobile Apps, and SPO Requirements Mgmt. Intergraph has recogized the inherent issue with the handover process and is addressing this with a robust solution set with the focus on the needs of the O-O.