Supplier Provided Automation Services

This Supplier Provided Automation Services market research delivers current market analysis plus a five year market and technology forecast. 

AI-Powered Automation Services: Accelerating Digital Transformation in Energy and Process Industries

According to ARC Advisory Group research, the automation services business is transitioning to a digitized service environment due to the adoption of more IIoT technologies. The automation services market has historically been a people-to-people business involving skilled technicians visiting the customers' site to deliver the services. This business model will continue to represent most of automation services for years to come, but a growing percentage of the business is transitioning towards a digitized service environment. Sustainability initiatives are also driving investments in automation. Governments around the world have shown an increasing appetite toward investing to become less dependent on unreliable foreign suppliers of energy. This increased focus on energy security, and helped drive investment activity in nuclear, LNG, and even fossil fuel power plants. Sustainability goals and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) mandates have taken the forefront of every business sector. For many of the heavy process industries, decarbonization impacts the entire value chain, including raw materials, manufacturing products materials and components, as well as consumption by consumers and disposal.

Supplier Provided Automation Services Strategic Issues

In addition to providing a five-year market forecast, the Supplier Provided Automation Services market research provides detailed quantitative current market data and addresses key strategic issues.

Take Advantage of the Benefits Offered Through Virtualization

Industrial control system (ICS) virtualization offers clear benefits for end users. These include lower TCO, longer ICS life, fewer disruptive changes, and improved ability to manage change and implement continuous improvement. The largest payoff comes from reduced obsolescence. End user organizations should study the virtualization strategies of their potential future ICS suppliers, paying special attention to supplier plans for migrating existing installations (including controllers) to a future virtualized environment. Several suppliers have recently introduced DCS configurations with virtualized controllers. Buyers should understand supplier virtualization strategies and how these will impact their Capex for automation and their automation TCO.

Characterizable or Configurable I/O

End users should consider adopting the new breed of I/O. Leading automation suppliers have developed new I/O that is either characterizable, configurable, or a combination of the two. Characterizable I/O includes hardware modules that plug into a rack and can represent analog input, analog output, digital input, digital output, etc. The type of module plugged into the rack determines the type of signal. Modules can be plugged anywhere in the rack and are location independent. Configurable I/O solutions take a similar approach in terms of point independence and flexibility, but the I/O points are configured through software rather than hardware modules. Some vendor solutions offer a combination of characterizable, and configurable I/O. Vendors also offer software tools to support the commissioning and integration of smart I/O cabinets without a complete DCS.

How the Cloud and the Industrial Edge Affects IT/OT Architecture

The Industrial Edge is the space between traditional, closed automation systems and the modern, connected world. The edge is the “safe space” for industrial users to connect their OT systems to the IT world. It is also the space where mission-critical apps such as virtual PLCs will be hosted in future automation architectures. End users can experiment and discover the practical side of Industrial IoT by using edge devices to add new functionalities such as data analytics to existing automation systems. Machine builders can differentiate their offerings by adding new features. The key for both is to get ahead of the demand curve for the next generation of industrial machine control. The cloud may be located far away from the edge, but the two domains work hand-in-hand. The cloud is the space where most non-time-critical industrial software will be hosted in the future, giving supervisory software and analytics apps simple and secure access to data emanating from multiple plants. The edge is where data are collected as they are generated. Apps at the edge react quickly and locally, while apps in the cloud collect and evaluate large amounts of data from many sources. A reliable edge-to-cloud connection is important for daily operations but should not yet become a critical link for mission-critical operations. As users gain experience in both domains, they will learn which apps to run at the edge and which to run on the cloud. Many machine builders already deliver software virtualized on servers. It is important to develop this deployment technology as customers in the future manage their own architectures and request that software no longer be delivered with hardware.