Honeywell's Markos Tambakeras: “We Will Always Be the Technology Leader”
ISA Interview
Like the movie character Robocop—excellent at what it was asked to do, but sometimes hearing only what it wanted to hear—Honeywell Industrial Automation and Control has been the dominant player in process control systems for nearly two decades. It has also jealously guarded that premier position with aggressive marketing, and a breakneck pace of product introductions. Fresh from his ISA press conference, Honeywell IAC's president, Markos Tambakeras, sat down with Chemical Online to assess where Honeywell has come, and where it is going.
"Today, we feel that the solutions-based approach we adopted several years ago has been validated in the marketplace," says Tambakeras. "We do not approach customers with technology, but with solutions that make financial sense for them. Many people consider us only a systems supplier, but in fact that is the source of only 35% of our revenue. Nearly 40% comes from services, and the remainder from instruments and other hardware. It is a very balanced business." Tambakeras noted that Honeywell Hi-Spec Solutions, the grouping of software offerings from Honeywell, is accounted as a Systems sale when it is part of the purchase of a control system, and a Services sale when it is not. This appears to allow the company to position itself as an integrated software developer to companies that want a one-stop shop, and at the same time to be ready to integrate other vendors' products when called to do so.
The announcement of OpenField, Honeywell's version of Foundation Fieldbus-compliant products, is something of a milestone for the company. Observers of the years-long fieldbus wars (which continue to go on, with most of the battle between Foundation Fieldbus and the Profibus organization for standards-setting in process control) remember Honeywell as one of the companies that dug its heels in at wide-open common standards. As Tambakeras tells it, Honeywell is now jumping to the forefront of Fieldbus compliance. "The technology has matured enough that now we can offer a clear benefit to customers," he says. "We are making a statement with OpenField. Remember, standards like Fieldbus are only an enabling technology. We want to be in a position where we can offer customer benefits. Fieldbus now will provide us a way to integrate advanced control [on open communications] and to migrate the older systems of our customers."
He sums up the situation with a stance repeated numerous times during the ISA press conference: "Honeywell has never been behind. We will always be a technology leader." To back this up, Tambakeras points out that it has been spending 25-75% more, in relative terms, on R&D than any of its competitors over the past three years.
The ISA press conference was also the unveiling of @sset.MAX, an integrated umbrella of existing and new Honeywell products and services for asset management. Honeywell does appear to be the frontrunner in applying not just preventive maintenance but also predictive maintenance and root-cause analysis in an integrated, automated fashion. While parts of the service, like Equipment Health Management, are already commercial, other parts are being kept for the time being in the Abnormal Situation Management consortium that was formed several years ago, and will be commercialized late next year. Asset management is a newly contested area among control system vendors, independent software developers and the business-systems software firms like SAP. Honeywell is working closely with PSDI, one of the leading independent developers of asset management software, and is also a Certified Solution Provider with SAP.
"We continue to have very good relations with SAP; we have executed a number of joint projects," says Tambakeras. "Our approach to asset management comes very much out of the perspective of real-time process control." Real-time data handling is not one of the hallmarks of SAP's methods of asset management, but Tambakeras is not signaling that it will compete directly against SAP: "It is not yet clear to us what SAP's approach will be in this area."
Honeywell has made numerous acquisitions over the past several years, particularly in software. The troubles of many software companies currently—especially Aspen Technology, whose stock has plummeted by nearly 90% in the past three months—makes for a ripe environment for more acquisitions. Tambakeras concluded the interview with this statement: "Honeywell is always looking for opportunities to enhance value, but we are not looking any more than usual. We will never acquire just to gain market size."
By Nick Basta