Blair Provides Business Outlook, Explains Enterprise Control

Blair said business in North America has been picking up since last December, and if the second half of the year stays on track, it will continue the growth curve for the year. Following that, business in 2011 should show stable growth. The product side of the business is coming back strongly as customers resume investing in control.The next investment wave, according to Blair, lies in customers integrating the complete solution with InFusion Enterprise Control System (ECS). “We’re starting to see installations where customers can evaluate the return, and customers are seeing value coming from ECS,” noted Blair. “This is where we’ll have added value to the market. We still have products and solutions, but ECS offers more value. Customers see how aggregating data to provide information that enables decision making in near real-time drives more value to the business.”One Invensys customer who is sharing his story at the conference had a problem at his wastewater treatment plant. When he saw a rain storm coming, he and his crew previously had to rush down to the plant to be able to manually adjust valves in case of flooding. But by adding Invensys instrumentation, controls and software (all parts of the Infusion ECS solution), he was able to see into the plant from home. He could make decisions on whether he needed to drive to the plant. Not only was this a control solution, it was also a solution that benefited his work/life balance, as well.One last value of ECS, said Blair, “Sometimes, there is more efficiency, sometimes other things, but in the end, people are starting to see that more is possible than they ever thought before. That’s where innovation starts.”