After lunch, the displays and demos were opened up, allowing users to see the wonders of Invensys, and their partner companies. Invensys had a mega-booth in the middle of the floor...you know, the kind of display they used to take to ISA, when taking booths like that to ISA was de rigueur. On the back walls of the room were tabletops for the partners. Some of the partners were interesting, and some were more interesting than the sessions looked to be. So I spent some time talking to a few of the partner companies.
Bob Hamm, regional sales manager and channel manager for MTL observed, "When you swim with sharks, it is wise to be a remora!" We were discussing MTL's preference for selling to OEMs, of which Invensys is a favorite.
Markus Nied, president of ecom Instruments (yes, the lower case 'e' in the name is correct) showed me a really cool IS version of what is apparently the guts of an HP IPAQ that has been industrially hardened and made either Class I Div 2 or Class I Div. 1. Nifty, and it bounces when you drop it.
Holly O'Gara and John Rekemeyer, of enterasys ("Networks that Know") were pushing security and network appliances that they said had been incorporated by various Invensys companies into their product offerings.
Jim Bolin and troops from Pepperl and Fuchs were there, doing what MTL was doing: swimming with the sharks. They had an impressive amount of I/O on display.
