IAONA Becomes Independent, Self-Governing Organization with Mission to Speed Deployment of Ethernet on Factory Floors
Waltham, MA, November 24, 1999 ? The Industrial Automation Open Networking Alliance (IAONA), today announced its official designation as an independent, self-governing entity operating under California law as a nonprofit corporation. IAONA is comprised of leaders from the industrial automation industry who are committed to the advancement of Ethernet and Internet-based networks on the factory floor. With its official founding, the twenty-one member strong alliance races forward with its mission of encouraging the growth of open networking on the factory floor by identifying and resolving issues; hosting forums; organizing technical and marketing committees; sponsoring educational programs; publicizing issues and developments; and making recommendations to standards groups.
?In IAONA, Ethernet on the factory floor has a strong champion,? said IAONA chairman Cornelius ?Pete? Peterson. ?IAONA combines representatives from the leading control systems and Ethernet solutions companies ? creating a hub of support where issues can be identified and resolved to expedite the use of Ethernet in industrial automation. IAONA defined its mission and elected board members at its first organizational meeting during ISA TECH/99 on October 6, 1999 in Philadelphia. At that meeting it was decided that IAONA was not to be a standards organization, but rather would act in the role of a discussion and pre-standards activity group for industrial applications of Ethernet and TCP/IP. The new board members were elected as follows:
Chairman ? Cornelius ?Pete? Peterson, president, founder and chief executive officer of NETsilicon,
Secretary/treasurer ? Richard Caro, vice president at ARC Advisory Group,
Marketing committee chairman ? Mark Taylor, vice president of corporate marketing at NETsilicon, and
Executive director ? Chip Stockton, chief executive officer of Conference Concepts, Inc.
The next IAONA meeting is scheduled during the Allen-Bradley Automation Fair on December 8, 1999 in Long Beach, California. Marketing, survey and website committees are currently meeting and will be reporting on their findings at this meeting. The survey committee chairperson is Steve Montgomery, president of SST, and the web committee chairperson is Eric Byres, vice president of client services at Artemis Engineering. Also on the agenda are technical issues such as determinism, real-time response, acknowledgments, power mapping, high availability, ruggedness, redundancy, security, and migration from existing protocols.
Additional IAONA Board Members
Gary Ackerman, president, Workflo Automation, Inc.
Eric Byres, vice president of client services, Artemis Engineering
Steffan Dahlstrom, vice president, HMS Fieldbus Systems AB
Michael Evensen, vice president/industrial automation, NETsilicon
Mark Fondl, vp/general manager/automation division, Lantronix
Benson Hougland, director of technical marketing, Opto 22
Jim Lee, president, Cimetrics
Jeff Michalski, president, Concur System Technologies
Steve Montgomery, president, SST
Kenneth J. Weileder, product marketing manager, Echelon Corporation
Phil White, chief technology officer, Zoneworx
For further information, including membership and upcoming events, visit the IAONA website at www.iaona.com or contact Chip Stockton at cgstockton@aol.com or 858-673-1372.
About IAONA
The Industrial Automation Open Networking Alliance (IAONA) is a trade group chartered in 1999 for the purpose of encouraging the growth of open networking in industrial automation. IAONA joins Ethernet-Internet technologists and the leading developers of industrial automation applications to identify, discuss and resolve issues that stand in the way of manufacturers experiencing the many benefits of open networking across the entire factory. Located on the web at www.iaona.com, IAONA will encourage the adoption of open networking in industrial automation by identifying and resolving issues; hosting forums; organizing technical and marketing committees; sponsoring educational programs; publicizing issues and developments; and making recommendations to standards groups.
This is the who's who of the ethernet. Amazing board list.
Jack
Thanks to the RB board for finding it.
Another RB post of note.
NSIL vs ELON???
The main difference between NSIL and ELON (there are several)is that NSIL connects basically any electronic devices (imaging, home automation, industrial automation, communications, etc.) to a network or the Internet through Ethernet or IP. On the other hand, ELON connects the same (haven't seen them do imaging devices yet) devices through a recently approved ANSI standard called LONWorks. Why NSIL will likely be far more successful is because over 95% of networks are based on Ethernet while comparativley few are based on LONWorks. Why would any OEM want to build a product based on what a small minority of networks are based on is beyond me!! This is also the reason why NSIL has been so successful penetrating the imaging market first.
This success is highly visible by looking at both companies last few quarters of revenues:
NSIL: $2.2, 3.2, 3.0, 4.9, 5.8, 7.5, 10.1
ELON: $8.0, 8.5, 7.1, 8.6, 8.8, 9.8, 9.8
At the same time NSIL is highly profitable while ELON has been consistently losing $$$.
While I am not bashing ELON, as I think they will be successful as "networking everything" really takes off, I believe NSIL has a significanty better chance of paying off as an investment because of the Ethernet/IP connectivity and because of its capital structure:
ELON has 31 million shares outstanding
NSIL has 13 million shares outstanding
ELON market cap: 14.25 x 31 = $441 million
NSIL market cap: 12.81 x 13 = $166 million
I think most will agree that NSIL should be worth as much as ELON because NSIL has demonstrated it can successfully run its business (sales have steadily increased rapidly and they have reported steadily increasing profitable eps)and its target market, which is based on Ethernet/IP is much larger. While at the same time ELON has reported flat to slightly up revenues and slightly lower losses and are trying to jam a new protocol down its target market's thought to make its products successful, which I think will limit its possible growth. The one thing that ELON does have going for it is that it has had relationships with Cisco and Microsoft for quite some time. However, these relationships have still done nothing significant for them in terms of revenues to date as far as I can see.
To look at ELON's market cap and say NSIL's should be equal, would be to say that NSIL should be trading at $441/$13 = $33.92 |
