ABB Earns 2017 Company of the Year Award from Frost & Sullivan for Its Leadership in the DCS Industry

The ABB Ability™ DCS platforms combine unified, cross-industry digitization with self-learning capabilities to drive smarter, faster, and simpler decision-making.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 10, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the Distributed Control Systems (DCS) industry, Frost & Sullivan recognizes ASEA Brown Boveri (ABB) with the 2017 Global Company of the Year Award for its innovative process automation systems. Connecting 70 million smart devices through 70,000 control systems, ABB has one of the largest installed bases of process automation systems when compared to other automation vendors.

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Despite several challenges in 2016, the global investment climate is improving following a rise in oil and commodity prices, accompanied by upswings in automation projects that will boost production capacity and improve productivity. However, as end user projects grow in size and complexity, the financial risk posed by the inability of end users to execute projects as planned has intensified over the past several years. There is a growing inability to deliver capital projects on schedule and within budget. In this scenario, the primary concern of end users lies in deploying their resources cost-effectively, while attaining higher return on capital employed.

"ABB stays abreast of critical issues, targeting transformative trends like Urbanization, Digitization and Innovation to Zero, to develop industry-specific DCS solutions that create new opportunities and value for their customers," said Ram Ramasamy, Consulting Manager, Frost & Sullivan. "This approach has allowed ABB to stay ahead of the competition and retain pole position in the DCS market."

Industries, such as oil and gas, chemicals, power, pharmaceuticals, steel, water, mining, food and beverage, are moving towards digital operating environment to improve performance, productivity, and cost-effectiveness. ABB recently launched its Ability^TM platform, which provides unified, cross-industry digital capability—extending from device to edge to cloud—across devices, systems, solutions, and services. Unlike competing solutions, ABB also added self-learning capabilities to its solution that allows the system to harvest data, take control, and facilitate users to do more with less.

As part of its ABB Ability solutions, ABB released its Select I/O, an Ethernet-based single channel I/O solution that can be configured in the field. This allows each I/O channel to remain flexible and "undeclared" until very late in the project, often until just before the commissioning phase. This effectively decouples I/O hardware engineering from software design, which significantly lowers development costs and shortens the time to market for new/modernization projects.

ABB offers two ABB Ability DCS product lines along with customer support programs and a Value Provider Program (VPP):

• ABB Ability System 800xA and ABB Ability Symphony® Plus — Both industry-leading DCS solutions support customers by driving gains in performance, productivity, efficiency, and safety throughout the end user business operations lifecycle, from the planning stage to the lifecycle OPEX stage. Symphony Plus is tailored to the power generation and water industries, whereas System 800xA caters across all other industries.
• ABB Ability Collaborative Operations — Customers connect instantaneously to a subject-matter expert from ABB for timely help and assistance 24/7. Problems are solved before they become failures by utilizing data insights and advanced analytics, and through remote collaboration that enables real-time customer interaction.
• ABB Value Provider Program (VPP) — This one-of-a-kind program develops ABB's third-party channels, including distributors, system integrators, panel builders, and service providers. With the help of this program and a wide net of third-party providers in addition to its internal sales organization, ABB ensures close proximity to its end users to reduce the response time to its clients' sales, support, service, and engineering needs.

"The VPP adds significant value for ABB's customers. The third-party provider's in-depth knowledge about local markets, coupled with expertise in ABB's products, enables it to function as an extension of ABB, resulting in extensive coverage in targeted regional segments," said Ramasamy.

ABB equips industrial customers with digital technology and a cloud platform to empower every person, team, and business system within an organization to glean new insights and drive smarter, faster and simpler decision-making, thereby helping every customer seize new growth opportunities. By offering ultimate flexibility in the field, ABB sets a new standard in the execution of automation projects. With its strong overall performance in both innovation and market leadership, ABB is recognized with Frost & Sullivan's 2017 Global Company of the Year Award.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents a Company of the Year award to the organization that demonstrates excellence in terms of growth strategy and implementation in its field. The award recognizes a high degree of innovation with products and technologies, and the resulting leadership in terms of customer value and market penetration.

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 to identify best practices in the industry.

About ABB

ABB (ABBN: SIX Swiss Ex) is a pioneering technology leader in electrification products, robotics and motion, industrial automation and power grids, serving customers in utilities, industry and transport & infrastructure globally. Continuing more than a 125-year history of innovation, ABB today is writing the future of industrial digitalization and driving the Energy and Fourth Industrial Revolutions. ABB operates in more than 100 countries with about 136,000 employees. www.abb.com

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community.

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