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Posted On: 02/01/2005

Customer orders triple one year after Microsoft and Invensys form alliance

Invensys announced today that the number of innovative customer solutions using ArchestrA technology has continued to grow, due to new Wonderware offerings, the formation of the Invensys Process Systems Solutions group and the strength of the Microsoft and Invensys alliance announced at ISA EXPO 2003.

To date, more than 180 companies have implemented in excess of 300 projects using Wonderware's FactorySuite A² software including the distributed Industrial Application Server.  Last August, in the largest Microsoft partner-distributed system test ever conducted, these products demonstrated unprecedented scalability, indicating that deployment, operation and management of large systems are well within reach of today's ArchestrA technology.  This test was performed at the Microsoft Partner Solutions Center in Redmond, Wash., and included 500 computer nodes simulating 1 million real-time plant I/O points.

The Microsoft and Invensys alliance was established to combine Invensys' strengths in process and manufacturing applications and expertise in key industry segments with Microsoft's platform, technology and enterprise products. The alliance is designed to drive a new generation of Invensys solutions to provide manufacturers with real-time visibility in their plant environments and supply chains.

"We are very proud of the great strides we are making in achieving widespread adoption of the ArchestrA software architecture," said Ulf Henriksson, COO of Invensys. "There's no doubt that our success has been greatly accelerated due to our relationship with Microsoft, which has helped us deliver the types of products and solutions that existing and new customers are demanding."

Leading global companies across a broad range of industries including oil and gas, food and beverage, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, paper, automotive, steel, electronics and utilities are leveraging ArchestrA architecture, a common foundation for industrial solutions.  ArchestrA is being used in a variety of projects such as remote SCADA operations, plant-wide supervisory control, plant intelligence, regulatory compliance, production management and enterprise collaboration.  The ArchestrA architecture, based on Microsoft .NET, is enabling companies to rapidly connect plant operations to enterprise business systems.

"Over the past year, Invensys has enthusiastically embraced the Microsoft platform to build solutions that focus on critical areas impacting manufacturers today," said Charles Johnson, worldwide managing director of manufacturing industry solutions at Microsoft.  "The results are a true indication that manufacturers recognize the winning combination of Invensys' manufacturing applications and industry expertise and Microsoft's enterprise-class technologies - a teaming that has resulted in the delivery of comprehensive industrial automation and information solutions that enable customers to increase visibility of their plant operations, improve productivity, and ensure lower total cost of ownership."

ArchestrA architecture and Microsoft .NET
The ArchestrA architecture was designed from the outset to extend the life of legacy systems by leveraging the latest software technologies such as Microsoft .NET.  Offerings built on this architecture empower decision-makers to achieve business goals without abandoning prior investments in automation systems, production processes or intellectual property.  ArchestrA technology allows software applications to be rapidly assembled rather than programmed allowing the creation of new applications simply through the reassembly of existing applications.

As part of the ongoing alliance, Invensys will continue to work closely with Microsoft to ensure that customer applications built on the ArchestrA software architecture meet the mission-critical needs of industry while evolving effectively as the Microsoft Windows Server System and Microsoft .NET technologies continue to develop. 

First Year Milestones
According to Mike Bradley, president of Invensys' Wonderware and ArchestrA business units, during the first year of the alliance significant steps have been taken on the engineering and the sales/marketing fronts:

• Invensys has completed training of more than 200 developers on Microsoft's Visual C#, Microsoft .NET technologies, as well as ongoing training on Trustworthy Computing.
• More than 300 Invensys employees have been trained on other Microsoft products, including BizTalk Server 2004, SharePoint Portal Server and Live Communications Server.
• Invensys has completed its first year goal of achieving MCAD/MCSD certification of 20 percent of its targeted development staff.
• On the product side, the release of Wonderware's Industrial Application Server 2.0 represented a significant industry milestone.  Microsoft and Invensys worked jointly to conduct validation and benchmarking tests that covered scalability, operation and administration of the technology, with results greatly exceeding business unit expectations.
• Wonderware's product line is among the first plant software to be qualified on the latest Windows XP SP2, ensuring that the highest security protection is available to customers.
• Wonderware and Microsoft jointly completed a 17-city "Plant Intelligence Customer Conference Tour" in major cities across North and South America, Europe and Asia resulting in more than 1,000 requests for customer follow up.

Significant Customer Momentum
Working together, Wonderware and Microsoft closed a major agreement with Shell International Exploration and Production BV for development of integrated oilfield operations.  Shell selected Invensys as one of the strategic partners for its Smart Fieldsâ„¢ initiative. The decision was made based on Invensys' domain expertise, the unique enabling technologies provided by the ArchestrA architecture and the ArchestrA Collaboration Environment (ACE), as well as Invensys' business process consulting capabilities.  The multi-year agreement leverages Invensys' experience in the production of oil and gas reserves, its capabilities in adaptive collaboration and its data integration expertise.

In addition, Invensys, Microsoft and Microsoft Business Solutions partner Aston Business Solutions have teamed to supply a major project at Nutramax Manufacturing, Inc., a nutritional supplement products company based in Maryland.  In an effort to modernize and improve business operations, Nutramax Manufacturing, Inc. intends to automate its processes while continuing to follow FDA regulations for manufacturing practices.  The operational benefits expected in the automation of the manufacturing and business processes include quantifying and reducing raw material waste and improved inventory use. The Nutramax Manufacturing, Inc. solution includes Wonderware software that uses ArchestrA technology for manufacturing operations integrated with Microsoft Navision business software.

For more information about products and solutions built on ArchestrA technology, please visit www.wonderware.com or www.invensys.com.