Emerson Brings Cloud-Based SCADA Into Its Field

With its acquisition of Zedi’s software and automation businesses, Emerson is getting hold of the cloud-based monitoring, control, and optimization needed to help oil and gas producers make sense of the data being gathered through all the sensors out in the field.

Emerson, which is heavily invested in serving the oil and gas market, has long been touting the benefits of pervasive sensing. The automation supplier has been developing sensors to cover the market space, embracing wireless technologies to make it easier to spread sensing capabilities across oilfields, in particular.

To help oil and gas producers make better use of all the data being gathered by those sensors, Emerson has now acquired the software and automation businesses of Calgary-based Zedi, including its cloud-based supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) platform. The cloud-based monitoring, control, and optimization will further Emerson’s ability to help oil and gas producers increase production and lower operating costs.

At the latest Emerson Global Users Exchange in October in San Antonio, where he first took over as executive president of Emerson’s Automation Solutions business, Lal Karsanbhai pushed for using the data that’s already so prevalent through sensing technologies. “There’s tons of data in our facilities already,” he said. “So let’s use that data with better analytics to better understand equipment and process trends.”

Cloud computing will be a key enabler for oil and gas producers to optimize their operations by analyzing trends in data over time and across wellsites or facilities. Zedi’s technology—which is currently enabling the monitoring of more than 2 million sensors and thousands of devices and applications—will be a key enabler for Emerson in this area. By combining Zedi’s scalable cloud platform and applications expertise with Emerson’s extensive applications, controller, instrumentation and flow metering portfolio, this acquisition expands opportunities for Emerson across the global oil and gas production market.

“Oil and gas producers today are challenged to meet production targets while controlling costs, and they are looking for opportunities to transform operations and make their teams more effective through digital solutions like analytics and mobility,” said Jim Nyquist, group president of Emerson’s systems and solutions business. “This important investment bolsters our portfolio and ability to help Emerson’s customers achieve top-quartile performance through emerging Industrial Internet of Things technologies.”

Emerson and Zedi’s software and automation businesses share a common vision of automating the production process through edge and cloud analytics and machine learning. The combined software and expertise of the two companies will provide producers with scalable and easily deployable end-to-end connected solutions to optimize and manage their operations.

The addition of Zedi’s technology will undoubtedly help Emerson compete against other recent cloud-based SCADA entries to the market, including Honeywell’s Experion Elevate, ABB Ability Wellhead Manager, and Schneider Electric’s ClearSCADA.