Gopinath, who is responsible for R&D, services, support and partnerships, including the company’s ecosystem of partners, began by acknowledging the status of the proposed acquisition of Invensys by Schneider Electric.
Schneider Electric has made a firm offer that has gone through shareholder approval, he said, and the deal is now going through antitrust filings. “An integration team has been set up in anticipation of successful closure” of the deal, Gopinath said.
Mike Caliel, chief executive officer and president of Invensys' Software and Industrial Automation business, is leading the integration team from Invensys’ side.
The acquisition process will go through “its due course and we’ll have to see what happens regarding timing. One thing that has already come out clearly is the value Schneider Electric sees in the people, technology and assets of Invensys. Invensys has a great track record and we’re extremely confident that, should the deal go through, the synergies will be very strong and we will unleash even more value.”
In the meantime, said Gopinath, “We’re going to focus on our strategy and ensure that all our relationships with partners and customers will continue as usual.” He then explained Invensys’ software strategy, which began three years ago when the company established the software business unit. “We have a vision to become the leaders in industrial software, and you will see today and this week how we are making that vision reality,” he said.
The key components of that vision are innovation, reach and service.
Innovation includes improvements to the user experience of technology by enabling access to information anywhere via integration across various information systems and geographies. This involves Invensys’ increasing use of “next-generation visualization, cloud computing, mobile enablement, rich analytics
, and how we’ve grown our System Platform to support it all,” he said.Reach relates to the fact that Invensys' global consulting organization “now has more than 300 people around the world to help you,” Gopinath said, We will have more 'verticalization
' in our portfolios, with more industry-specific solutions, as well as new partnership models." He also pointed to plans for continued “inorganic growth,” in the form of strategic acquisitions. Recent acquisitions include InduSoft and Smart Glance.
The services part of the strategy includes “investing very formally in creating consistent experiences to access our services, adding remote and local project management,” said Gopinath. Which means that no matter where or who you are, “you’ll have a partner who can deliver these projects.”
As evidence of the Invensys’ vision already in action, Gopinath cited a large greenfield refinery project for Statoil that required integration of real-time performance monitoring and management across 120 business processes, 70 workflows
, and 20 applications.
“The world of operating software is becoming larger and technology alone will not be enough to address this requirement,” he said. “We have to define the business processes and, as a prime technology vendor, take end-to-end responsibility for multiple technologies coming together.”
“The future is here now, and we are very serious about making the right investments,” concluded Gopinath.”We are committed to driving the revolution.”
