ctl - factors, page-4

Asia going well too.....

Interview


Scott Druery, Citect Sales Manager, Asia Pacific, recently visited Korea where he was interviewed by Monthly Control of IANEWS Magazine. An abstract of this interview is detailed below:


CITECTSCADA is in high demand around the world and has been adopted enthusiastically throughout the Asian region. The reason for the success of this innovative integrated system is its high power and quality.



Q. Scott, what is the reason for your visit to Korea?

A. To introduce CitectIIM into the Korean market.


Q. CitectHMI is a significant product in the Asian region. Can you tell me how much this product has grown in 2004?\



A. CitectHMI sales grew 27% in 2003. The growth for 2004 will exceed this level. I can not give you a growth rate as 2004 sales for the region have not yet closed. China recorded the highest growth rate, followed by Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. The growth rate in Asia now exceeds that of Europe.


Q. Is the market for CitectSCADA saturated?

A. No, CitectSCADA is the core product but there is high demand for other solutions such as Facilities, Pocket, Plant2Business (P2B), Batch, HMI and IIM.



Q. CitectSCADA V6 has recently been released. Why has it taken so long for Citect to release this upgrade?

A. Citect products are market leading, of the highest quality and work effectively from the time they are launched. With a Citect product there is no need to continuously launch new versions to correct faults in earlier versions.


Q. What are the functions and features of the new version?

A. CitectSCADA V6 offers significant improvements in visualization and communications.

One of these features would be the move to True Colour where CitectSCADA’s colour palette can select from more than 65,000 colours. This is particularly good for the visualization of complex symbols and other imported images. In this version we have significantly expanded the standard library of symbols which come on the CD. The True Colour improvements also allow flashing colours to be used in the improved colour environment.

An exciting new feature in this release is our Process Analyst. This is a very powerful tool to give a time based representation of both trend and alarm information simultaneously. For example, this means that for the first time plant operators can easily correlate process changes visible in their trended data, with the time a plant alarm may have been triggered.

We have also included a web client in this release. For a long time we have had internet display clients for the deployment of thin-clients across Intranets and the Internet, but in this release we have introduced the web client which allows CitectSCADA to be used through Internet Explorer.


Q. Most companies in the automation industry attempt to grow their business through semiconductor or display industries. What is the focus area for Citect?



A. Citect products fit well with industries demanding reliable data control and high speed integrated systems. Important markets for Citect include Semiconductor, Steel, Mining, Oil & Gas, and Utilities such as Power and Water.


In the Steel industry in particular, Citect occupies a very strong position in the market, which can be seen by the tremendous success of Citect in Korea.

We are also having a lot of success in the Power industry where power plants are removing their legacy DCS systems and replacing with more flexible and equally robust solutions such as CitectSCADA.



Q. Many software enterprises would like to advance by becoming total solution providers and supplying both the software and hardware. What do you think about this approach?



A. Citect is proud of the fact that we are the largest truly independent automation software provider in the world. This means that our customers can select the best hardware for their application, along with Citect products. As such, our focus at this time is on the software business.