A year of opportunity

HERE WE ARE AT THE START OF NEW YEAR, and it's going to be full of opportunity. And opportunity for industrial networking means opportunity for our readers, for our advertisers and of course their customers. More and more devices can now be connected to networks of some sort, and while these are developed by relevant specialists, the networking community needs to be able to offer simple, secure and reliable ways of connecting them together so that users can get real benefits from their networked systems.

Too often in the past, technology has been promoted for its own sake. At most, technological advances are interesting, at worst, irrelevant. Technology is used to develop new features; those features result in benefits and people buy the benefits. Companies and engineers who are able to think of their products in benefit terms may well be the ones who can take more advantage of all these the opportunities that exist. This is nothing new: it's basic sales training about the nature of buying.

So just where are these opportunities? Everywhere - or rather, everywhere that some use of networked systems could bring a benefit. Benefits can be directly financial, or might make a task easier, or better controlled, or easier to manage, or safer. There is no single network or protocol that satisfies every need, so the answer isn't just to put Ethernet everywhere. Ethernet is extremely important, but it's only a transport mechanism. Other protocols and standards are involved and there has to be scope for specialised networks, legacy networks, and interworking between different standards.

And industrial networking is applicable in so many industries. This year we have planned another Building Supplement, since building control is already an established discipline, and many large and medium-sized manufacturers have divisions working exclusively in this field. We are also going to produce a supplement for the Printing and the Paper Industry, because there is so much interest from these two sectors in improved automation. Printers continually work to improve their processes by using computers and networks, and often adopt new technology before anybody else does. But they are manufacturers and operate conventional production lines that can be automated. Paper manufacturers, on the other hand, are often international companies with many sites that manage processes across national boundaries 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Industrial control systems can give them this.

A lot of new readers from all over the world have registered for copies of the magazine through the web site (www.industrialnetworking.co.uk), and have submitted reader replies using FastReply. With so many requests for the 2002 Feature Schedule this can now be downloaded directly as a pdf from the home page. In the coming months we will be providing more facilities through the internet, including improved links pages, a better diary system and a product finder. Don't forget to send us entries for the diary!

Lastly, this issue contains a show preview for 'Industrial Networks - Fieldbus and Open Systems', Trident Exhibitions' new show at the NEC, which has been introduced this year as part of Mtec on February 13-14. Industrial Networking and Open Control is supporting this show - we'll be on stand Q15, if you'd care to drop by.

Use feedback to let us know your views: It couldn't be easier.

Geoff Lock
Editor