If you've gotten into the immediacy of RSS feeds, we are pleased to announce that the ControlGlobal.com RSS feed went live on Tuesday night. Grab it while it's hot!

Walt

From ISA:


Through ISA SP99 Standards Committee on Manufacturing and Control Systems Security, automation leaders from around the world are leading the way in defining consensus approaches to securing manufacturing and control systems. You are invited to contribute to that effort by reviewing the work of the committee.

For a limited time through the end of 2005, ISA is making available at no charge copies of the published works of the committee and the latest draft standards now under development at http://www.isa.org/securitystandards . Follow the directions on the page to choose the document you'd like to review.

Our objective is to encourage use of the approved guidance in the two technical reports and to obtain even broader input to the next generation of standards.

Please take time to read the documents and give us your feedback. You can email comments, suggestions, or questions to ISASP99@isa.org.


T.S. "Chip" Lee
Director, Publishing Services

This is a very rare opportunity that ISA has asked so many people outside of the standards committee itself to comment on the drafts produced so far.

I strongly encourage you to take the time to let your views be known.

Walt

This entry is almost two weeks late...due to my hectic travel schedule, mostly. On Sept. 30th, Keith Larson and I met with Dennis Gillespie, president of MOST (MTL Open System Technologies) and his colleague, Dave Reynolds, vice president of marketing.

We talked about MTL, and how it has grown from little to larger, now approximately $100 million per year. Through all of this, MTL has maintained its focus as a vendor to OEMs...and has extensive relationships with Honeywell, Invensys, et al.

After the history lesson, the discussion got really interesting. MTL bought what is now MOST several years ago, and Gillespie and Reynolds and I got into a significant discussion about how to market a second tier control system against the Big Six...and even against other second tier vendors.

Obviously, the most useful channel is independent system integrators, and MTL has been an associate member of CSIA for many years.

But here's the thing: Gillespie and Reynolds get it! They understand that system integrators are not a low volume, low discount distributor channel. They understand that working with integrators is, in Nels Tyring's words back when he and I were teaching how to work with integrators to everyone who would listen to us, "getting married."

Gillespie and Reynolds surprised me by saying that they understood that they were going to have to find projects and feed them to the integrators they were interested in working with... and that is a realization that is so unusual among vendor companies that notice should be paid.

I'll be watching MOST carefully to see if they can walk the walk, and I won't be surprised if they do.

Walt