Schneider Electric with PLC Scada Automation | Sofcon.com

A post-Invensys-acquisition update

By Rick Zabel, Publisher & Editor

  Last week in Orlando, FL, Schneider Electric hosted its first Global Software Customer Conference since it acquired Invensys in January. The conference has its roots as WonderWorld, the former Wonderware company’s own user conference. Over the years, after Invensys acquired Wonderware, the conference evolved into OpsManage, a global event that emphasized all of Invensys’ software, control, and safety offerings. Since Schneider Electric's purchase of Invensys, I have been waiting to hear some news about the integration of the two companies. That news, as it relates to software, was delivered last week at the conference.

In April of this year, Schneider Electric created a new business unit called Global Solutions. Global Solutions is made up of four key offerings. One of those offerings is Software, which will continue to be led by Ravi Gopinath as Executive Vice President. The Software business consists of the legacy Invensys brands—Wonderware, SimSci, and Avantis—as well as Schneider Electric’s Citect, Ampla, and OASyS DNA (Telvent SCADA) software brands, integrated into one business.
In addition to the Software business, Global Solutions consists of the following offerings:

• Field services and product support applicable to other Schneider Electric product offerings.
• Segments, activities related to industry-specific and key account level, global sales and after-market customer relationship management.
• Digital services, which is a basket of offerings that may or may not leverage software. Examples include cyber security risk assessment services and Telvent weather forecasting service.

Global Solutions and its President, Daniel Doimo, will be headquartered in Lake Forest, CA, which has long been the headquarters for Wonderware and the Invensys software business. Doimo stressed that software is a key pillar to Schneider Electric's global strategy. "We invested in software because we have the vision," said Doimo. "We don't want to reinvent the wheel - we want to spin it faster." Schneider Electric’s Global Solutions business will deliver holistic and integrated solutions to its customers. They are committed to tailored solutions for specific industry segments. Doimo and Gopinath believe the more robust, combined solution set offers the most comprehensive portfolio to help its customers achieve operational efficiency. However, Gopinath stressed, "We are always looking for opportunities to strengthen our portfolio through acquisitions."

Improving the user experience and driving additional value are the cornerstones of everything the company does. Gopinath said the software business has and will continue to focus incessantly on improving user experience, even as the customer persona is rapidly changing. Their second focus is interoperability, which is where architecture comes into play.

Software Architecture

At the core of its software solutions, and at the lowest layer of the architecture, is a common platform called Wonderware System Platform. It is the information management framework for all of the company’s software products. It is open, scalable, and secure, and it works across multiple hardware platforms. The second layer consists of applications that perform specific functions, like HMI, historian, MES, asset management, etc.  The third layer encompasses solutions for specific industry segments.


Prior to the Invensys acquisition, Schneider Electric introduced StruxureWare, a unique software platform of integrated applications and suites that delivers visibility into energy and resource use across an organization. The StruxureWare concept and name will be used in the newly combined software business. StruxureWare will be a collection of applications or solutions that are tailored to specific industry use cases.  They will provide specific, unique functions required by industry segments. A few of these StruxureWare offerings have been defined, but they are still early in the process of defining others.