Baker Hughes announced the commercial release of its CENtrilift PASS slimline ESP system, which is designed to help operators optimize production and reserve recovery while lowering lifting costs in small-diameter wellbores or wells with restricted space due to casing patches or complex completion designs. According to the company, it is the industry's only small-diameter ESP system capable of operating at flow rates down to 50 BPD, and it includes the most comprehensive suite of slimline gas-management technology.

IBM unveiled a series of new cognitive solutions intended for professionals in supply chain. With these new offerings, IBM is enabling organizations across all industries and of all sizes to integrate new cognitive capabilities into their businesses.

Rockwell Automation is expanding its Information Solutions offerings, focused on helping manufacturers to connect, manage, validate and optimize production with manufacturing execution systems (MES), manufacturing intelligence and analytics applications, and information-driven services.  These offerings are key components of the company's portfolio of solutions to help its customers journey towards The Connected Enterprise. 

On June 6, 2016, Aspen Technology, Inc. announced it had acquired Fidelis Group, LLC, a leading provider of asset reliability software that process industry companies use to predict and optimize asset performance. Now, AspenTech introduces Aspen Fidelis Reliability, which process industry companies across the globe have used for years for RAM modeling and to predict and optimize asset performance.

IFS presents new version of IFS Enterprise Operational Intelligence
IFS announced a major update to its IFS Enterprise Operational Intelligence (IFS EOI) product—the first major release since the solution was acquired through the acquisition of VisionWaves in July 2015.

The new version of IFS EOI (8.1) will be released to market in early 2017 and features a number of enhancements including:

Hitachi, Ltd. announced that the establishment of a high-efficiency production model that makes use of IoT, which reduces the production lead-time for the representative product by 50 percent, as part of the production innovation efforts at its Omika Works for designing and manufacturing information control systems and devices. Representative product refers to the control devices for the power and social industry sectors, which account for about 20 percent of the total production at Omika Works.

Emerson Delivers New Cloud-Based Industrial Internet of Things Solutions

Emerson announced it is working with Microsoft to help industrial manufacturers realize the business impact and value of Industrial IoT with Emerson's recently announced Plantweb digital ecosystem and Connected Services, powered by the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite.

PrismTech, a global player in software platforms for distributed systems, announced Vortex Edge PMQ, a predictive analytics solution for Edge Computing in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Vortex Edge PMQ provides a fully integrated hardware, data connectivity and analytics package which rapidly turns IIoT data into real-time predictive maintenance insights and actions.

These two products were presented at the IFS World Conference 2016 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

IFS unveils IoT solution to help customers drive digital transformation
IFS, the global enterprise applications company, announced IFS IoT Business Connector, a new product that shortens the time from ideas to tangible benefits for customers' IoT initiatives by providing an end-to-end architecture and the ability to turn IoT discoveries into actions.

Manufacturers of process automation systems and devices have many options to test new products. However, these tests are seldom performed early in the development phase under actual conditions at the company's own plant. Rockwell Automation and Endress+Hauser have now inaugurated their first joint test plant for validation purposes in Europe. The two companies have been partners in a strategic alliance for more than 10 years, in an effort to combine their strengths for the benefit of customers and to create systems which communicate flawlessly with each other.