About a week before OpsManage`10, Invensys Operations Management announced a deepened relationship with Cognizant. Cognizant has been a high-level strategic partner for more than a year, involved with Invensys Operations Management technical and service development. Now, Cognizant will expand the capability for accelerated global delivery of Invensys Operations Management's InFusion™ Enterprise Control System-based solutions.
Cognizant is a leading provider of consulting, technology and business outsourcing. The company will take the lead in development of consulting and services to help improve the design, development and delivery of Invensys Operations Management's products and solutions for customers around the globe.
Sogeti USA, a member of the Capgemini group, provides information technology services and consulting to clients in several industries, including energy, chemical, utilities and manufacturing.
AMT is a technology-independent consulting and project-services company specializing in the application of multivariable predictive control and real-time, closed-loop optimization technology for the chemical, polymer and refining industries.
Each new alliance partner has demonstrated expertise in selling, implementing and supporting solutions designed to drive real-time operations improvements, helping clients to achieve control, asset, productivity and environment & safety excellence.
"Both the Sogeti and the AMT go-to-market arrangements are top-drawer examples of the win-win collaboration that's our objective in the Partner Ecosystem," said Ashtad Engineer, Vice President, Partner Ecosystem at Invensys Operations Management. "Clients—end-users—win, because Partner Ecosystems participants benefit from specialized Invensys product training. Plus, partners use our proven methodologies to help achieve a consistent, validated project outcome regardless of geographical setting. And, as suppliers, both Sogeti and AMT win by being able to focus their organizations on a well-defined and globally proven project path, access to Invensys resources and a well-received arsenal of Invensys Operations Management technologies."
A new ecosystem
An ecosystem's health and success depends upon interdependence—it is a highly-collaborative, complexly-orchestrated community. Applied as part of a business strategy in the Invensys Partner Ecosystem, it creates a partnering environment where group strength drives improvements far greater than those that can be realized by any individual organization.
"Invensys Operations Management embraces that ideal in the context of manufacturing operations management," Engineer explained. "Our Partner Ecosystem is comprised of suppliers, distributors, OEMs, systems integrators, and solution providers that together create one of the largest and most vibrant value-add networks in industrial automation. Together we develop, market, and service pioneering, real-time production solutions to bolster quality, throughput, workforce effectiveness, and regulatory and environmental compliance across many industries. The concept is simple: more partners working with our technologies means more innovation, more choice, and more satisfied customers."
"One benefit of the our methodologies is that by using them, organizations can enforce global standards yet still tap local systems integrators and service providers," Engineer said. "At least for some aspects of most automation projects, the best resources are often those that know the local scene-and that includes the local regulatory climate and work culture. Adherence to a common framework enhances the ability of global providers to make the most of all resources, both local and global."
Sogeti's role: mine more from manufacturing intelligence
Invensys and Sogeti will jointly approach the North American market with a collaborative solution that includes Invensys Operations Management's manufacturing intelligence applications as part of Sogeti's enterprise manufacturing intelligence framework.
Sogeti will utilize its relationships at the business and operations level to design an enterprise manufacturing intelligence solution for clients that provides analytical capabilities for everyone from executive management to plant operators and allows informed decisions to be made based on near real-time data captured from the plant operations and other enterprise systems.
The solution leverages data available from Invensys Operations Management's Wonderware manufacturing execution system and enterprise manufacturing intelligence software and adds the necessary components at the corporate systems to deliver the functionality.
"Sogeti USA is very excited to be part of the Invensys' growing Ecosystem of partners," said Bill Blaxton, senior vice president, Sogeti USA LLC. "We believe that our extensive experience in delivering business intelligence solutions and manufacturing operations expertise, combined with Invensys Operations Management's wide-ranging knowledge of plant-floor and manufacturing intelligence applications, allows us to provide a comprehensive business intelligence solution that will help clients integrate their shop floor data with their enterprise systems to drive operational excellence."
AMT to focus on SimSci-Esscor ROMeo online optimization
As part of its agreement with Invensys, AMT will work exclusively with Invensys as a third-party provider and implementer of Invensys Operations Management's SimSci-Esscor ROMeo online optimization application within the global refining industry.
Additionally, AMT will actively market and deliver the ROMeo application in the petrochemical and aromatics industries. Because AMT are recognized industry leaders in applying real-time optimization solutions, the new partnership will expand Invensys' reach within the oil and gas industry.
"We look forward to being a partner for Invensys Operations Management's market-leading optimization software, and we believe we can utilize the ROMeo software to help refineries all over the world achieve operational excellence," said Brendan Minter, president, AMT. "Our consultants have more than 30 years of experience in delivering and implementing real-time optimization solutions and have consistently delivered outstanding benefits to our customers during that time. With that history of success, we are eager to begin working with one of the most robust optimization solutions on the market today."
Cognizant agreement is 'next logical step'
In July, 2009, Invensys Operations Management entered a strategic relationship with Cognizant to help improve the design, development and delivery of Invensys Operations Management's products and solutions for customers around the globe. Last week's announcement heralded a deeper level of collaborative commitment, one designed to create critical, real-time business and operating information and collaboration solutions that can enhance enterprise-wide decision making and improve overall profitability.
Steve Blair, President, Invensys Operations Management, said of the Cognizant relationship, "This agreement is the logical next step for us and Cognizant. It's good news for our clients and our system integration ecosystem partners, and it's exactly what we envisioned when we joined forces on product development last year," said Steve Blair, president, Invensys Operations Management, North America.
"This is a great complement to our delivery mechanism because, in effect, we have expanded our collaboration from global research and development to a strategic alliance to deliver consulting and solutions jointly across our mutual clients' operations and business systems. The alliance will focus on large-scale, open integration utilizing the InFusion Enterprise Control System-the ECS."
InFusion ECS overcomes traditional barriers to achieving real-time visibility, enterprise-wide profitability and operational excellence across an entire business. By linking independent systems and personnel that do not traditionally communicate or collaborate, the InFusion ECS acts as a system of systems to provide critical, real-time business and operating information and collaboration to enhance enterprise-wide decision making and improve overall profitability.
Blair added, "Together, Cognizant and Invensys will provide fully integrated solutions that seamlessly connect the production environment with the decision-making, analytics and collaboration environment to drive real-time enterprise control and, ultimately, operational excellence," Blair said.
"This partnership adds tremendous value to our clients," said Ravi Gopinath, President, Invensys Operations Management, Asia Pacific. "Invensys will focus on creating and delivering innovative, real-time solutions for the operations management space. These services will be complemented by Cognizant's consulting and system integration capabilities in enterprise IT solutions, especially for large-scale, enterprise-wide projects. Customers will get the combined benefit of two companies: one that is a leader in automation and operations management and one that has deep expertise in enterprise IT, making this partnership truly unique in the industry.
"Additionally, the two companies will leverage new and existing client relationships where there is an opportunity to provide enterprise control solutions and services to support these clients. Cognizant has also certified its sales and support teams on Invensys offerings, enabling Cognizant to fully support the go-to-market model envisioned in this partnership," Gopinath said.
"We are pleased with our maturing relationship with Invensys Operations Management," said Venkateswaran Mahesh, Senior Vice President, Engineering, Manufacturing and Retail Practice, Cognizant. "By combining our deep knowledge of Invensys products with our consulting-led approach, global delivery platform and proven capabilities in enterprise systems integration and analytics, we are delivering a compelling value proposition to Invensys customers by way of industry-aligned enterprise control solutions. The success of this relationship truly underscores the power of collaborative innovation."
