Frost & Sullivan: ASKOM's SCADA System Offers One of the Best Performance-to-Price Ratios

LONDON, Sept. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the European SCADA market, Frost & Sullivan has presented ASKOM Sp. z o.o. (ASKOM) with the "2010 Polish SCADA Price Performance Value Leadership Award." In a market continuing to battle the repercussions of the economic downturn, ASKOM's Asix has proved a hit, as a low-cost solution boasting functionalities competitive with those of more expensive products.

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The constant influx of vendors offering innovative products has substantially fragmented the Polish supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) market. To sustain a leading position in such a competitive market, SCADA manufacturers must continually introduce new technologies and add functionalities to their existing systems.

Asix is a software bundle for design and realization of industrial IT systems for enterprises, processes, technological lines, machines and devices. Even at one-third of the price of competing products, it possesses significant levels of functionality, enabling it to fulfil the expectations accorded to human-machine interface (HMI/SCADA/manufacturing execution systems (MES).

A basic part of Asix is the visualization system, a SCADA-class software designed to facilitate operator supervision over technological objects and assure both analogue and digital data acquisition.

ASKOM recently launched its enhanced Asix 6 version, offering the AsTrend module for graphical process data analysis, AsAlarm for alarm analysis, AsRaport for report creating, AsPortal for Internet access to all data types, AsBase for batch processing and event-driven data archiving, and AsAudit for system validation according to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 21 CRF 11/GAMP4 requirements. This new version, developed in close collaboration with practitioners, has become a highly advanced tool that meets the requirements of this software segment.

"Asix architect guides users through the entire application-design process, providing them with the tools necessary for layout adoption, and offering a set of ready-made products, such as the Process Information Web Portal, to allow for automatic data presentation on the Web," says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Katarzyna Owczarczyk. "The benefit of an easy-to-operate system, which simultaneously offers remarkable price-to-performance value, is incalculable, making Asix hugely appealing to the Polish SCADA market."

As with any technological solution, vendors are expected to offer superior after-sales service support. Accordingly, ASKOM employs skilled and experienced visualization and automation system designers and developers to manage the technical after-sales support. ASKOM also supports a group of authorized system integrators, comprised of a chain of over 30 companies. This group provides a team of experts, that asix users can find locally to run the design, start-up, and service of systems based on Asix's software.

The Asix system design is exceptionally simple and intuitive. It eliminates the need to purchase a separate design license, as an application designer is made available in each product. Asix serves objects effectively by archiving data directly in the operator station, even for extensive number of variables, and thereby reducing the project cost considerably.

A notable aspect of Asix's software is its high functionality. This has been confirmed in many situations, including those requiring high reliability or in connection with system validation for critical applications in the pharmaceuticals and food processing industries.

"The use of over 4,000 licenses by an impressive clientele confirms the success of Asix and its wide acceptance," notes Owczarczyk. "These include heating plants, sewage treatment plants, the food industry, intelligent buildings, the chemical and machine industry, and telemetric systems, among others."

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to a company that has developed a product to suit the market and client needs. The award lauds price competitiveness, product features and ease of use, and service efficacy, as it benefits the recipient company.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About ASKOM

ASKOM is the integrator of automation systems, manufacturing execution systems (MES) and SCADA systems. ASKOM's SCADA product is a software bundle for design and realization of industrial IT systems, providing significant levels of functionality as expected from HMI/SCADA/MES software. Beyond standard visualization and controlling, it realizes the effective archiving of data, reporting and trending, alarm management, recipes, visualization in Internet, multilingualism, production tracing and tracking.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from 40 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit http://www.awards.frost.com.

SOURCE Frost & Sullivan