Sunday, December 25, 2005
Honeywell to acquire Tridium (December, 2005)
Here comes another interesting acquisition. Some people even said this case is more or less like IBM acquiring Microsoft at its beginning in building automation industry.
Is Tridium going to become the Microsoft in BA industry? Maybe. Tridum has successfully got its Niagara Framework platform behind many building automation product lines in the market, such as Siemens Steafa Talon system, Honeywell Webs and Invensys I/A series. In September 2005, Johnson Controls launched a new system based on Niagara AX platform called Facility Explorer System. By now, almost every traditional BA giant has at least 1 product line powered by Tridium. And among HVAC manufacturers, CarrierOne Comfort Integrator and Mcquay MicroTech II Chiller System Manager are actually Tridium JACE controllers.
But, wait a minute. How about Echelon, the owner of Lonworks? I figured out years ago, this company want to be BA Intel + BA Microsoft, with Neuron Chip in every Lonworks controller and LNS network operating system in most of the Lonworks networks.
Well, so far, no one dominates the market, because companies learned a lot from IT history and became more and more alert. As a result, on any potential direction, there are more than 1 runner. And existing big players can not afford a single chance of losing the game, they just follow every direction. The game of "de facto standard " is harder and harder.
But they do have difference. Echelon tries to have everybody speak Lonworks, while Tridium accepts all the existing communication protocals including Lonworks and bring them easily on web pages.
The interesting thing here is that this acquisition blurs the line between competitor and partner. Try to replace "Tridium" with "Honeywell" and read the first paragraph again. How do you feel? Will this acquisioin affect Tridium's market presence among Honyewell's competitors after it lose the independency in BA industry? I finally find the answer. Tridium does not care! Its ambition is more than BA and HVAC industry.
Is Tridium going to become the Microsoft in BA industry? Maybe. Tridum has successfully got its Niagara Framework platform behind many building automation product lines in the market, such as Siemens Steafa Talon system, Honeywell Webs and Invensys I/A series. In September 2005, Johnson Controls launched a new system based on Niagara AX platform called Facility Explorer System. By now, almost every traditional BA giant has at least 1 product line powered by Tridium. And among HVAC manufacturers, CarrierOne Comfort Integrator and Mcquay MicroTech II Chiller System Manager are actually Tridium JACE controllers.
But, wait a minute. How about Echelon, the owner of Lonworks? I figured out years ago, this company want to be BA Intel + BA Microsoft, with Neuron Chip in every Lonworks controller and LNS network operating system in most of the Lonworks networks.
Well, so far, no one dominates the market, because companies learned a lot from IT history and became more and more alert. As a result, on any potential direction, there are more than 1 runner. And existing big players can not afford a single chance of losing the game, they just follow every direction. The game of "de facto standard " is harder and harder.
But they do have difference. Echelon tries to have everybody speak Lonworks, while Tridium accepts all the existing communication protocals including Lonworks and bring them easily on web pages.
The interesting thing here is that this acquisition blurs the line between competitor and partner. Try to replace "Tridium" with "Honeywell" and read the first paragraph again. How do you feel? Will this acquisioin affect Tridium's market presence among Honyewell's competitors after it lose the independency in BA industry? I finally find the answer. Tridium does not care! Its ambition is more than BA and HVAC industry.
# posted by comfortpoint @ 3:11 PM 
