Industrial Transformation Blog

Infor CEO, Charles Phillips, is discussing the proposed IPO that has been in the news since the beginning of the year. Serious talk of Infor’s IPO started in January, 2019 with the announcement of a $1.5 billion investment in the company by Koch Equity Development, an arm of Koch Industries and Golden Gate Capital. Of all the major enterprise application vendors, Infor is the largest that has remained a privately held firm.

Over 4,000 people attended Epicor Insights 2019 in Las Vegas the week of April 15. As in previous years, the conference showcased new products and upgrades from a leading supplier of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for the mid-market, with users across manufacturing, distribution, service, and retail companies.

Sparta Systems is an interesting firm. Well known for its on-premise TrackWise product, it had stumbled in recent years as it faced many new cloud-based competitors. Over the past year, it brought on a new leadership team and put its considerable weight behind the development of its Force.com-based TrackWise Digital cloud product. As we look at the Summer 2019 release of TrackWise Digital, has the effort paid off?

OSIsoft held its annual PI World user conference in San Francisco the week of April 8, with 2,500 attendees and dozens of OSIsoft partner companies in the exhibition area. This vendor has continued to evolve from its origin as a data historian for process industries to an enabler of data analytics and intelligence for a broad set of industrial companies, and has moved up the stack in terms of data visualization capabilities. Even during a typically heavy industry event season, (and the world’s largest industrial trade show, Hannover Messe in Germany the week before) attendance at PI World increased year-over-year again. PI World is now widely regarded as one of the most important conferences on the calendar for process industry IT and operations technology (OT) professionals.

The LNS Research globetrotting team found itself in Hannover last week, excited to see what’s new in the world of Industrial Transformation (IX). The event was as full (or perhaps even busier) than the last two years, it was noticeable that the space for software companies was substantially larger, and the big guys had toned down the one-upmanship: gone were the enormous jet engines, tractors, and other boys’ toys. In their place were small booths demonstrating the latest solutions and lots of open space with tables and chairs for better interaction with show-goers and potential customers.

The #MondayMusings Industrial Transformation blog series provides insight and analysis for executives from the previous week’s briefings, events, and publications @LNSResearch.

Recently, SAS invited LNS Research to its annual North American analyst event in Naples, Florida. SAS is a leading analytics, BI and data management software provider with several of LNS’ manufacturing clients using the analytics solutions to generate deeper insights into quality. The event was a great opportunity to dig deeper into SAS’ Internet of Things (IoT) and quality solutions, understand the breadth of SAS outside the industrial space, and engage with their executive team.

The #MondayMusings Industrial Transformation blog series provides insight and analysis for executives from the previous week’s briefings, events, and publications @LNSResearch.

In December 2018, OSIsoft and Element jointly announced the release of Element’s Asset Framework Accelerator for users of the OSIsoft PI System. The new offering, which was developed by Element with support from OSIsoft, is a combination of software and services that are designed to accelerate the creation of Asset Framework (AF) data models at speeds more than ten times faster than what was previously possible .

On December 11, Dassault Systèmes (3DS) announced the acquisition of mid-size manufacturing ERP vendor IQMS for $425 million. While this seems like a high price, the fit for 3DS is strong, and it will considerably extend the offerings 3DS can make to their midsize discrete manufacturing clients.

Research analysts from LNS attended the Plex Systems Analyst Day in early November at the company’s headquarters in Troy, Michigan. In an unusual move, Plex hosted its Customer Advisory Board (CAB) concurrently, giving customers and analysts a chance to interact directly. This level of direct access is rare among software vendors and demonstrates a strong show of confidence by the Plex executive team. The Plex CAB includes representatives from companies in automotive, metal forming, food and beverage (F&B), aerospace and defense (A&D), and other discrete and batch manufacturing industries.