Automation software products are ready to dominate the automation and control systems industry

Citation

(1998), "Automation software products are ready to dominate the automation and control systems industry", Assembly Automation, Vol. 18 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/aa.1998.03318aab.006

Automation software products are ready to dominate the automation and control systems industry

Automation software products are ready to dominate the automation and control systems industry

Systems for automation and process control have historically been dominated by the hardware element, contrasting greatly with the world of PCs, where software has become the most important source of revenues and profitability within the industry.

European Industrial Automation Software, a new report from MarketLine International, shows that there are now growing signs of the emergence of a similar structure within the automation and process control industry, with separation of hardware and software products increasingly common, and high levels of growth predicted for the automation software market.

Key findings of the report include:

(1) The total European automation software market will grow at a steady 4 per cent per year until 2002.

(2) The market for published automation software for PC systems will grow by 73 per cent to reach US$241 million in 2002.

The European automation software market will grow at a steady 4 per cent per year until the year 2002

The market for automation and process control software is rapidly becoming the focus of development and revenues in the automation industry, with software now the crucial future product for those suppliers of large control systems who intend to remain active in this market in the next decade. Rather than being sold as a standard suite of operating system software, and included within the price of, for example, programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and distributed control systems (DCS), automation software is now increasingly being marketed as a separate product.

The total requirement for automation and process control software is currently valued at US$3,145 million. However, one-third of this requirement is hidden, i.e. not fully available to market competition. This is because of the costs of operating system software that are included in PLC and DCS hardware systems prices. The total competitive market is thus valued at US$2,060 million.

MarketLine predicts that the market for automation software will grow rapidly over the next few years, partly because of increasing product sales driven by the PLC and DCS markets, but also as a result of the following factors:

• •

  There is a decreasing proportion of custom software programming dealt with in-house by the end-user industries' engineering departments, re-allocating expenditure to systems houses in the competitive software markets.

• •

  An increase in the size of the total competitive market will occur as a greater proportion of the total available software market opens up to market competition.

MarketLine forecasts (Figure 1) that the competitive European market for automation and process control software will increase to US$ 2,500 million by 2001, representing an annual growth rate of 4 per cent.

Figure 1. Forecast value of the European automation software market, 1996-2001

The market for published automation software for PC systems will grow by 73 per cent to reach US$241 million in 2002

MarketLine forecasts (Figure 2) that the market for published software for PC-based systems (MMI, SCADA and Soft Logic)will grow at an annual rate of 11.6 per cent to reach a level of US$ 241 million in 2001. The market for custom software for PC-based systems will grow at a rate of 12.9 per cent.

Figure 2. Forecast value of the PC-based automation software market by type, 1996-2001

These high growth rates contrast sharply with MarketLine's forecasts of 1per cent annual growth for custom software for DCS systems, and indicate the increasing importance of software and PC-based solutions within the industry.

MarketLine predicts that software will be the most important product for control systems suppliers in the next decade. In a similar way that acquisitions and alliances were made with DCS vendors and systems houses in recent years, now the top automation and process control software companies with SCADA and Soft Logic products are actively being sought as partners or subsidiaries by the international PLC and DCS providers.

European Industrial Automation Software is available from MarketLine International at a cost of $2,995.

For sales enquiries contact: Michael Jones, Tel: (+44) 0171 624 2200.