Summary

Summary

Virtualization, a computing approach that decouples hardware and software, is rapidly gaining traction in the traditionally conservative automation and control industry. With its roots in the information technology (IT) world, virtualization was initially met with skepticism for industrial applications. But this has changed, largely driven by end user demands to reduce costs and make more efficient use of their existing computing resources.

Summary

ARC Advisory Group recently attended Schneider Electric's 2014 Influencer Summit at the company's new Boston One Campus in Andover, MA. This facility serves as the company's North American headquarters as well as one of five global R&D facilities. The theme, "The Next Age of Change," was very fitting. The Summit largely focused on the convergence of operations technology (OT) with information technology (IT), infrastructure modernization, sustainability, smart cities, utilities, and digital services.

Summary

In September, ARC Advisory Group had the opportunity to attend the 2014 Users' Group for Yokogawa at which the company continued to showcase its technology and services innovations. The four-day event in Houston had 500 registrants from 160 companies and 10 countries outside North America. This represents a 40 percent increase in attendance over the prior event held in 2012. The energy level appeared high, with halls filled with engaged users and pertinent sessions focused on products and applications.

Key takeaways include:

Summary

Summary

A global energy company with over 4,000 employees worldwide, operates extensive oil and natural gas production assets, both onshore and offshore. Company executives recently discussed the company's experience implementing a cloud-based Data as a Service (DaaS) with ARC Advisory Group. The objective was to securely share appropriate production-related data with the energy company's joint venture partners.

Summary

There is no question that one of the primary drivers in today's global economy is the ever-increasing demand for energy. Industry, business, and society at large across all local, regional, and national levels steadily and relentlessly demand more energy to fuel both emerging economies and maintain the industrialized world. While the growth of alternative energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal, and others continues to grow, fossil fuels will remain a mainstay of energy production, at least for the foreseeable future.

Smart and Powerful Sensing Nodes

Sensing for the emerging Internet of Things has been characterized by the use of extremely "smart" and wireless network edge nodes, such as smartphones in the consumer electronics space. Not only do these devices contain powerful sensing, they have significant on-board signal processing, storage, and networking resources; providing the potential to aggregate and analyze data locally at the network edge and in the Cloud.

Summary

Summary