BATCH OF IDEAS

By Stephanie Neil

Senior Editor

Rockwell Automation has been on a buying streak as of late, acquiring companies that strengthen the automation supplier’s foothold in supply chain and cybersecurity offerings—with a lot of focus on the cloud.

I recently spoke with Rockwell CEO Blake Moret, who told me that the company has been prioritizing acquisitions based on a new strategic framework around information solutions and connected services. And the biggest move made to date is the acquisition of Plex Systems, a provider of a single-instance, multi-tenant software-as-a-service manufacturing platform that delivers MES software and supply chain management capabilities from the cloud.

Completed in September, Rockwell bought Plex for $2.2 billion in cash, folding the company into Rockwell’s Software and Control operating segment. That came on the heels of the purchase of Fiix Inc., a cloud-based artificial intelligence-enabled computer maintenance management system (CMMS). Together, the technologies these companies provide position Rockwell with a strong portfolio of cloud-native offerings for its manufacturing customers’ production systems.

“We’ve produced intelligent products on the factory floor where data is born, but landing that data into software apps that provide additional insight is important,” Moret says. “And the Plex smart manufacturing platform does just that. In addition, Fiix takes data from the plant floor and applies artificial intelligence (AI) to help with predictive maintenance.”

Moret added that the Fiix AI-enabled system connects teams, tools, data, and processes that could lead to the ability to make changes in a closed-loop autonomous control fashion.

And, when asked how these new tools could help manufacturers deal with supply chain disruptions that are currently causing major problems, Moret said that the Plex platform includes supply chain planning modules to gain better visibility into what materials and components are available for production to help inform a flexible manufacturing strategy. “Bringing supply chain planning together with planning for what happens on the plant floor is an important new capability we have,” he said.

To that end, in November, Rockwell also acquired Avata, a services provider for supply chain management, ERP, and enterprise performance management. Avata has domain expertise in enterprise applications and is a consultant and systems integrator for Oracle cloud software applications.

By significantly improving end-to-end supply chain visibility and management, Avata, together with Kalypso, Rockwell’s industrial digital transformation services business, Moret says this will help further unlock the value of IT/OT convergence that Rockwell can deliver to customers. Avata will be integrated into Kalypso, which is a part of Rockwell’s Lifecycle Services business.

And, of course, with all of this data moving around, there is a need for security.

In November, Rockwell announced new investments in its IT/OT cybersecurity offerings that includes partnerships with Dragos for its threat intelligence services, and CrowdStrike, a provider of a cloud-delivered endpoint and workload protection platform.

The Dragos partnership will focus on incident response services and threat intelligence to increase the speed with which customers can assess and remediate a cybersecurity threat by offering enhanced incident response services. Additionally, Rockwell and Dragos experts will offer a mutually developed threat intel feed.

Rockwell and CrowdStrike will deliver endto-end cybersecurity and network service to customers. The partnership will examine initiatives for CrowdStrike’s cloud-native, AI-powered Falcon platform with Rockwell’s global deployment, network architecture, support, OT, and managed services capabilities to deliver differentiated offerings that address customer cybersecurity pain points.

This is in addition to Rockwell’s 2020 cybersecurity acquisitions, including a company called Oylo, a cybersecurity services provider based in Barcelona that provides assessments, turnkey implementations, managed services, and incident response, and Avnet Data Security, an Israeli-based cybersecurity service provider.

This all ties into the opening of Rockwell’s Cybersecurity Operations Center in Israel. The center, which opened in November, focuses on delivering remote cybersecurity services to global customers, adding to the company’s existing footprint of 15 remote service centers around the world.

Moret also told me that the company is expanding its focus in semiconductor production and automated warehousing for e-commerce applications. And, in 2022 all of the pieces will be integrated to address specific industry challenges. “The overall plan is to bring the connected enterprise to life in 2022,” he said.

Watch our video on Rockwell’s acquisitions and plans for 2022.