A cornucopia of current concerns

The November issue of MSI comes to you at a busy time of the year, as managers bear down so as to show project progress prior to the holiday season's arrival. This sense of urgency extends to IT and software vendors—and to the magazine's editors themselves—coming out of a busy show season.

Within the issue's pages you'll find coverage of industry events that include ISA Expo 2004, Frontline Solutions Conference & Expo, and Auto-Tech 2004; as well as user conferences for Lighthammer, SSA GT, Realization Technology, and PeopleSoft.

ISA Expo is about automation and IT use in process industries. This year, it was dominated by discussions of security concerns, both the relatively innocuous—but potentially very expensive—threat posed by hackers armed with their worms and viruses, and the possibility of terrorism directed at plants, which by the very nature of their processes, could be turned into weapons of considerable destruction.

Microsoft manufacturing industry managers at the event put aside marketing concerns to take time to soberly address the situation vis-à-vis hackers. Their comments can be found on page 18.

The story coming out of Frontline Expo was all about radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. It's okay to be skeptical when it comes to RFID. Look at the whirlwind that was struck up around trade exchanges a few years back, which just as quickly died away. The difference is that even in its inception, doubts were expressed as to whether trade exchanges were a coherent model for enterprise transactions. With RFID, while there are issues to be worked out, the degree of cooperation aimed at working out those issues, the clear sense that RFID will deliver supply chain productivity and security, and the detailed questions users already engaged in projects are asking, all lead you to believe this is more than a marketing frisson.

In addition to Frontline coverage, the issue's cover story looks at RFID users and vendors, as well as EPCglobal, the standards organization that is doing much good work in the area.

Auto-Tech is an impressive automotive industry event, and some of the biggest names in Detroit were speakers there. AIAG, which runs the event, is defining standards that will allow not just data integration, but also, business process integration amongst tiered suppliers. What this means in simple terms can be discerned in the article appearing on page 16.

Expect continuing coverage of the work ISA is doing in process industries for standards promulgation for plant-floor/enterprise integration and security; what AIAG is doing for automotive; and other industry efforts as well, in upcoming issues of MSI.

As much ink as blood has been spilled over the ongoing battle Oracle is waging to acquire PeopleSoft, Sidney Hill, Jr., executive editor, was there when PeopleSoft announced its new relationship with IBM—which may or may not be related to the acquisition—and as former CEO Craig Conway let the string play out on his tenure, live before an audience of reporters and analysts.