If obstacles are in place long enough, it’s assumed they must always be there, even though they could be moved with some imagination and effort. No doubt one of the foremost initiatives to simplify, streamline and rouse process automation and control technologies debuted this week at Emerson Exchange 2025 in San Antonio, Texas. Entitled Project Beyond, it’s a software-defined, enterprise-operations platform that modernizes and seamlessly integrates Emerson’s industrial automation technologies with AI and other IT capabilities.
“It’s always been tough to be a manufacturer because you must produce the most product at the highest quality and lowest cost, as well as be flexible, maintain safety and reliability, and now achieve sustainability and reduce carbon emissions,” said Peter Zornio, CTO at Emerson, during the event’s press conference and panel discussion. “Trying to balance all these goals can also lead to some conflicts, which is why Emerson—and its Aspen Technology business in particular— are always trying to help. Now we have a unique opportunity to change process automation architectures to address these challenges and successfully balance these goals.”
Because IT-based edge and cloud computing could help in these situations, Zornio reported that Emerson developed the Boundless Automation strategy it announced in 2022, which is now celebrating the launch of Project Beyond. In addition, while AI is a new topic for many organizations, Zornio added that Emerson has been doing it for 30 years, with the applications of neural nets, machine learning (ML), pattern recognition, and its advanced process control (APC) solutions.
“AI has always been part of what Emerson and its Aspen Technology business do, but now we can also interface with large language models (LLM) using natural language tools,” explained Zornio. “We had several pieces of this solution three years ago, but with full integration of AspenTech technologies and breaking down many former silos, we can now bring the automation software layer into a new environment that we call Project Beyond—an operations management platform.”
While a steady stream of process automation innovations has flowed for 40 years, Zornio added they typically emerge in specific areas, such as field instruments and process optimization. One of Project Beyond’s primary goals is to bring them all together in an integrated manner.
“Core computing is experiencing the kind of shift that hasn’t been seen since the mid-1990s,” said Zornio. “This modern one combines AI at the edge, management in the cloud, and the ability to look across enterprises. It takes computing into new environments that used to have traditional, hierarchical architectures, along with obstacles to data sharing and processing.”
Project Beyond includes three primary sections:
1. Enterprise operations platform (EOP) that’s software-defined and OT-ready. It consists of:
- Scalable software-defined computing power in an environment that integrates on-premise edge and cloud locations.
- Secure networking infrastructure to connect OT assets in IT environments.
- Unified data ops via AspenTech Inmation software to provide a single source of contextualized information.
- App catalog that’s built for agility with orchestrated deployment and scaled build-outs of existing, new and innovative software apps.
- AI orchestration to facilitate simple, optimized, unlimited integration of AI agents.
- Zero-trust cybersecurity for all of the above EOP parts.
2. Digital intelligence for unlocking deep analytics by better connecting and contextualizing data. It empowers digitally enhanced workforces with connected knowledge that comes from:
- Real-time data,
- Historical data,
- Large-language models,
- Maintenance data,
- Safety data,
- Planning and scheduling,
- Process simulation, and
- Process models.
3. Optimized autonomous operations that proceed to deliver breakthrough performance, enabling users to reach their digital transformation goals by evolving:
- Siloed system architectures into cohesive software platforms;
- Data islands into a unified data fabric;
- Defense-in-depth cybersecurity strategies into inherently, secure-by-design protections;
- Hardware-defined components into software-defined components;
- Single-site focus into enterprise operations; and,
- Local operations into anywhere operations.
“Project Beyond’s ultimate goal is to keep evolving its operations platform, so it can be tailored to meet the needs of individual operations and plants,” said Claudio Fayad, CTO of Emerson’s Aspen Technology business. “However, the OT space is traditionally fragmented, which can make it difficult to coordinate the 50-70 types of software that will be required by autonomous operations in the future.”
Likewise, when users add or adjust sensors or other devices, making these alterations in one area typically requires them to go back and change many more items due to the constraints of traditional networks and infrastructures. This makes many upgrades time-consuming because users also have to add connectors, hardware, historians and other components and services, which also makes these updates less feasible and more likely to not be completed.
Fayad reported this is where Boundless Automation’s computing power, hyper-converged infrastructure, virtual tools like DeltaV IQ controllers, and AspenTech Inmation industrial data fabric can help. This is even more true lately as these solutions are integrated with Project Beyond’s scalable computing, secure networking, unified data ops, apps catalog, AI orchestration, and zero trust cybersecurity (Figure 1).
“We previously thought that controls were the center of the universe, and they still play a big role. However, they’re also part of a multidimensional system of IT-based tools that can also contribute to optimization efforts,” says Fayad. “These include all the other data coming in from sustainability-related devices and other sources, which are needed to avoid downtime and other issues.”
Fabric has your back
To support all these increasingly digitalized, unified and collaborative capabilities, Emerson is backing them up with the AspenTech Inmation industrial data fabric that levels up information management.
“The DeltaV distributed control system is evolving to serve other adaptable applications and deployment strategies. For example, our DeltaV Edge Environment and DeltaV IQ controllers are decoupling software and applications from hardware for greater flexibility and added value. We’re also adopting the Inmation industrial data fabric that migrates users from traditional data management to a higher-performance data architecture, delivering and managing data across multiple sources, systems and infrastructures to improve optimization.”
Dr. Nina Schwalb, VP and head of AspenTech Inmation data fabric at Emerson’s Aspen Technology business, reported its four key attributes are:
- Data connectivity and storage that can handle any data, any protocol, in any format, and do it at any time.
- Data consolidation, and contextualization at the point of ingestion, which enable data governance and validation across all levels.
- System agnostic capability that can adapt to any client ecosystem.
- Demilitarized access across networks and system boundaries by user interfaces and on-premises, edge, cloud and hybrid systems.
“We’re going beyond structured, time-series data to unstructured data like videos,” said Schwalb. “While information can’t be structured at every level, a data fabric must be able to move that information into a worldwide network in seconds, and enable historization and analyses.”
Fayad added that, “The data fabric doesn’t replace what users already have. It just elevates to meet their future needs. They can use the fabric to talk to all the pieces of their systems, add more sensors, get more data and improve security.”
Schwalb reported that future plants, networks and process applications will handle both structured and unstructured data, and quickly build the context they need for handling events, alarms and other situations. “Uncoupling and abstracting data will let devices in different areas talk to each other more easily because they won’t be required to know so much about each other ahead of time,” she explained.
Zornio added, “Automation is really too small a word for what we’re doing now, which combines operations and optimization of all kinds. For instance, Emerson was already strong in areas like instruments and distributed control, but adding an optimization leader like our Aspen Technology business to the fold lets us integrate planning, scheduling and design. Now, we have all the pieces and can bring them together into an integrated operations platform.”
