Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, Monday, February 27, 2006 — (Business Wire
India) — Increased use of Distributed Control Systems has helped
end-users in the market improve process quality and reduce the downtime
and life cycle costs, eventually boosting revenues. Greater investments
and favorable workforce-related conditions in China and India are also
fueling this growth.

Developed economies such as the United States, certain parts of Western
Europe and Japan are tapping the retrofit and service-oriented areas of
the DCS markets.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (www.industrialautomation.frost.com),
World Distributed Control Systems Markets, reveals that revenue in these
markets totaled $9.56 billion in 2004 and projects to reach $12.40 billion
in 2011.

“The growth in the oil and gas verticals along with the development of the
pharmaceutical and chemicals segment is also driving the DCS markets,”
adds Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Arunkumar J. “DCS companies must
capitalize on this momentum and target new areas such as food and beverage
and water and wastewater where their presence is not yet substantial.”

For capturing the already installed bases, they can provide competitive
prices and go for extensive promotional activities.

Market participants seeking higher growth margins need to spend heavily on
the development of sales and service teams. However, they should ensure
that these expansion costs do not outweigh the benefits derived from these
markets from such investments.

“A key concern for DCS sellers is the decreasing differentiation between
their products and programmable logic controller (PLC) systems in terms of
both technology and marketing strategies,” notes Arunkumar. “As a result,
companies target projects traditionally in the PLC domain, and vice
versa.”

DCS manufacturers also need to overcome increasing competition from
supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that interlink
PLCs or remote terminal units (RTUs) through a communication network and
central processor.

This substitute technology, priced lower than the DCS, is gaining
popularity. To counter this disadvantage, DCS enterprises must accentuate
on features such as simplicity in programming and reduction of overall
life cycle expenditure.

Further, DCS companies can project their products as ideal solutions for
providing overall control over process automation from production inputs
to output logistics, and field-level production management. These systems
integrate with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, management
execution systems (MES), and field-level PLC systems to provide a sole
unified architecture.

DCS is also perfectly suited for handling mission-critical applications
with a number of inputs, thus offering an integrated solution. They offer
an all-encompassing vision to use common open-systems and protocol
standards (Ethernet, foundation field bus, profibus, device net and HART,
to name a few) and act as an advanced graphical user interface with
pre-designed control screens for operator workstations, including
human-machine interfaces.

World DCS Markets, a part of the 9422 subscription, provides an overview
and outlook for the world distributed control systems markets. This study
segments the markets into verticals such as oil and gas, chemicals, power,
pharmaceuticals, pulp and paper, metals and mining, and others such as
food and beverage, water and wastewater, and textiles and cement. It
includes detailed market opportunities and industry trends evaluated
following extensive interviews with market participants.

Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering
with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more
than 40 years. The company’s industry expertise integrates growth
consulting, growth partnership services, and corporate management training
to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an
extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging
companies, and the investment community by providing comprehensive
industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines
ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics.