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Wonderware Numbers

ControlGlobal.com
07/10/2008

By Andrew Bonds, Industrial Automation Insider

One of the frustrations for Wonderware competitors over the years has been that, while Wonderware has operated as a largely autonomous entity, its financials have always been incorporated – some might say buried – within those of IPS. Congratulations then to Andreas Willi of JP Morgan for getting an answer when he asked, “If you could just update on how big Wonderware right now is in terms of proportion from the Process division?” Steve Hare’s rather surprising response: “With Wonderware we don’t specifically disclose it, but in broad terms it’s about 20%.” That, if you haven’t already done the sums, puts Wonderware’s revenues for 2007 at about £170m or, say, US£330m.

Another source of speculation has been whether the departure of Mike Bradley and his replacement by Sudipta Bhattacharya as head of Wonderware would herald a closer functional and operational integration of Wonderware within IPS. One possible straw in the wind is the unconfirmed report that Wonderware customers have been asked to fill in a questionnaire that asks, among other things, what their reaction would be to a rebranding of Wonderware and its products as Invensys.

Meanwhile Wonderware continues to reap the benefits of last year’s acquisition of MES software developer Cimnet, most recently with the launch of Wonderware Operations 3.4, formerly the Equipment Operations Module, and Wonderware Performance 3.4, formerly Equipment Performance Module/DT Analyst, both based on Cimnet’s Factelligence offerings. The chief feature of the new application is closer integration with System Platform and InTouch, which is being promoted as a common application services platform for implementation on top of virtually any existing system. Wonderware Operations 3.4 comes in Standard and Premium editions with incremental levels of MES functionality, while Performance 3.4, part of the Wonderware EMI offering, provides tracking of an unlimited number of reasons for equipment downtime and unlimited calculations of overall equipment effectiveness.