from the "what does a system integrator do?" department...

Prosys is here, as a sponsor. Honeywell doesn't always play nice with system integrators-- partly they don't understand how to work with them, and partly, they think system integrators compete with their own services arm. It isn't true, of course. Honeywell can't take a $250,000 integration project...they couldn't handle the cost burden of just overhead... Which is too bad, because the Experion C300 system is really integrator-friendly. Which brings me to Prosys. Why is this such an exception? It is because Prosys has gone the way of many integrators-- the former Interwave, now Rockwell's MES integration arm, comes to mind-- who have found their re-usable code dresses up quite well as a real live product. Now, instead of being a pure integrator, they are a software vendor with a services business. Add some hardware, and they are a full boat automation supplier... Prosys has some really interesting tools for alarm management, control and optimization, as well as the tools to engineer and integrate them into the plant. Watch these people-- they are on the move.