Managing Automation - March 2008 - (Page 13)

Quote of the make the switch to running Amplify in part because the Amplify opportunity was greater. “We could have continued to provide manufacturing services [through Kemco] to the U.S. aerospace customer base or shoot for something bigger,” Nazar said. “We decided to shoot for something bigger.” Nazar joined Kemco in 2002 and, four years later, he was recognized by MA for having transformed a small, struggling job shop provider to aerospace companies into a growing and profitable company offering a range of manufactured parts, as well as engineering and design services. Besides diversifying Kemco’s business, Nazar instituted an aggressive lean Haider Nazar transformation that resulted in significant product cycle time reductions and improved on-time deliveries to customers. The changes also allowed the 50-yearold Kemco to attract new customers and begin to grow again. Nazar said Kemco has continued to grow but would have required additional capital investments to sustain that growth. Amplify is focused on helping small- and medium-size U.S. manufacturers — $250 million and below — successfully make the transition to global production, Nazar said. The company offers contract engineering and design services that help manufacturers and their offshore contractors attack design-for-manufacturing and manufacturing process challenges. Amplify also offers on-demand enterprise portals and business integration services that allow manufacturers to track, manage, and analyze manufacturing engineering projects they are undertaking with offshore partners. “As companies want to get products out the door faster, they need more effective ways to manage engineering projects,” Nazar said. “They need reliable and measurable processes up front that result in little or no rework.” Amplify is targeting manufacturing organizations involved in long-term, planning-intensive engineering projects. Those include companies in the aerospace, industrial manufacturing, and medical device industries. Amplify, Nazar said, is providing engineering services out of a 67-person office in Bangalore, India. The company’s U.S. headquarters, currently in Chesterfield, MO, is expected to relocate to Northern California. — Jeff Moad MONTH “This is exciting Too much golfing would have been bad for me.” — Mike Bradley, who recently retired as president of Wonderware but changed course to take the top spot at Apprion INTEGRATION FIRM BOOMI REDESIGNS FOR ON-DEMAND t was probably inevitable. The emergence of on-demand software has led to the emergence of integration software that connects off-site applications with the traditional onpremises variety. Now the integration software itself has gone on-demand. If you’re feeling a bit lost, you’re probably in good company. The integration challenges of an IT landscape that crisscrosses the firewall are well-documented, and few manufacturers have successfully daisy-chained all of their applications into a neatly functioning unit. For years now, integration specialists have offered software to connect a company’s ondemand and in-house applications. These providers create application integration by way of connectors that can exchange data among applications and keep processes such as the order-to-cash cycle, with all its moving parts, in sync. More recently, some of those specialists have embraced the concept of integration as a service, or IaaS. The latest of those is Boomi, Inc., which rolled out its Boomi On Demand offering in January. The company has offered its integration software via traditional on-premises delivery since its founding in Bob Moul 2000 and has amassed 350 customers across 11 countries. In 2006, company executives decided to make the leap to SaaS and undertook to rebuild the software for delivery over the Internet. “Our view is that traditional integration products are actually becoming the Achilles’ heel of the SaaS industry because they’re just so expensive to implement and to maintain, and a lot of them require developers,” says Bob Moul, Boomi’s CEO. Of course, Moul’s “tradi- I For the Continued from page 10 Record Joy Mining Machinery signed a multi-year subscription for Right Hemisphere’s visual product communication and collaboration software to automate and streamline the production of its technical support publications. Fagerhult Group, a supplier of professional lighting, picked Siemens PLM Software’s Teamcenter 2007 as its corporatewide PLM solution. FINANCIALS Epicor reported a fourth-quarter revenue increase of 15% to a record $119.7 million and GAAP net income of $22.5 million, up 61% from the prior year’s quarter. PTC’s first-quarter revenue of $241.2 million was up 9% from a year earlier. GAAP net income was $14.9 million, down from $15.2 million a year earlier. M&As Descartes Systems Group, a provider of on-demand logistics software, bought RouteView Technologies, Inc. On-demand supply management software provider Verticalnet, Inc. acquired a wholly owned subsidiary of BravoSolution S.p.A. PA R T N E R S H I P S ABB and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed a partnership on energy research. EXP Enterprise achieved the Ready for IBM Tivoli Software Validation. Llamasoft, Inc. and Kurt Salmon Associates entered an alliance aimed at providing supply chain network design applications and analysis. Under a development partner agreement, TrueCommerce has been designated as the electronic data interchange provider for select Sage Software Business Management Division product lines. 13 March 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Managing Automation - March 2008

Managing Automation - March 2008 Contents Take 1 Mailbox Mitsubishi, IBM, and ILS Team Up to Make Integration Easy for Automakers Former Agile Exec Takes the Reins at Arena Solutions The Next Phase for 2006’s PM Award Winner Integration Firm Boomi Redesigns for On-Demand Ex-Wonderware Chief Takes Helm at Apprion Notes Cover Story: A Rare Breed Special Report: Where are Control Architectures Heading? Transformation: Back to Reality Integration: Getting Standards Under One Roof Industries: The Quest for the Perfect Order Product Scan Advertiser Index Next

Managing Automation - March 2008

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