ICONICS Releases New Business Visualization Suite “BizViz” Based on Microsoft .NET Technology

Visualization Dashboard, Data Exchange, Reporting and Portals for Manufacturing and Business Intelligence Houston, TX, ISA ‘03 - October 21, 2003 — ICONICS, a leader in the development of Web-enabled industrial automation and business visualization tools for Microsoft Windows operating systems, today announced its all-new BizViz™ Suite of manufacturing and business intelligence products. The BizViz Suite includes several new products, which bridge the gap between manufacturing and corporate business information systems. At the core of the new ICONICS BizViz Suite are its new data-mining and Web portal technologies, written completely from the ground up to take advantage of Microsoft .NET and Microsoft SharePoint™ Portal Server. Collaboration between plant and business systems has never been easier. The BizViz Suite allows the bridging of virtually any industrial or corporate database and integrates information from different data sources, including Microsoft SQL ServerÒ, OracleÒ, SAPÒ, and OPC information. The BizViz Suite contains four products: ReportWorXä, PortalWorXä, BridgeWorXä, and MobileHMIä. Don Richardson, Director of Manufacturing Industry Solutions at Microsoft, comments, "ICONICS consistently demonstrates a commitment toward developing scalable, relevant applications that incorporate the most current Microsoft technology available and are based upon open industry standards. BizViz, based on Microsoft .NET and SharePoint Portal Server, is an excellent example of this ICONICS commitment." Craig Resnick, Research Director at ARC Advisory Group, says, "Many manufacturers continue to seek solutions built on the latest Microsoft technologies such as .NET. BizViz offers the industrial automation marketplace products to build visualization solutions that allow manufacturers to leverage new technologies, such as Microsoft .NET and SharePoint Portal Server." ReportWorX. The award-winning ReportWorX for .NET takes volumes of data from different data sources and turns the data into valuable information. Reports are easily created using a unique Microsoft Excel plug-in. Using the friendly and intuitive ReportWorX wizard, users can schedule reports based on time, date, events, OPC values, or database values. Reports can be redirected to printers, e-mail, fax machines, disk, desktops, and Adobe® Acrobat® PDFs, and can be published to the Web. BridgeWorX. The newest member of the BizViz Suite, BridgeWorX performs efficient data exchange to and from any database or data source. BridgeWorX has a unique visual transaction data-mapping configuration wizard, which enables users to transfer information to and from real-time OPC manufacturing devices to corporate business information systems. BridgeWorX data-mining technology can access Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Microsoft Access, SAP and virtually any real-time or archived manufacturing or business data source. The powerful BridgeWorX scheduler triggers “transactions” based on real-time OPC data, alarms, events, time and date, or database and file attributes. PortalWorX. A new product for the BizViz Suite based on Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003, PortalWorX allows users to easily create and manage custom manufacturing and business portals and visualization dashboards, which provide single sign-on and collaboration for optimization of key performance indicators (KPI). PortalWorX provides everything you need to create a portal for your real-time and historical plant and business information. PortalWorX is easy to configure, and delivers data to those who need it, when they need it. MobileHMI. ICONICS is known for its award-winning GENESIS™ family of HMI products, and MobileHMI is the latest HMI offering from ICONICS. MobileHMI turns data from different data sources into valuable, secure information right on your Web browser, mobile phone or PDA. MobileHMI supports a range of standards, including OPC Data Access, GSM, TDMA, and CDMA wireless application protocols (WAP). The ability for plant personnel to acknowledge alarms and analyze real-time information about their automation operations directly from their mobile devices is an ideal way to stay connected anywhere, anytime. "These new products are designed from the ground up to take maximum advantage of Microsoft .NET and the new Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003," adds Russ Agrusa. "Creating manufacturing and business intelligence information and visualization portals has finally become a simple drag-and-drop operation." ICONICS has been providing award-winning industrial automation and business visualization software for over 15 years, and has successfully deployed more than 100,000 solutions worldwide. For more information, please contact ICONICS at (508) 543-8600 or [email protected], or visit the ICONICS Web site at www.iconics.com. ICONICS Background Information Founded in 1986, ICONICS is a leader in the development of Web-enabled industrial automation software for Microsoft® Windows® operating systems. Offering the industry's only suite of fully-integrated OPC-based components and products, GENESIS32™ Enterprise Edition is available for Windows XP, 95, 98, Millennium, and 2000, and Windows NT®. Pocket GENESIS™ for Windows CE and Pocket PC was built from the ground up based on ICONICS' OPC-To-The-Core™ framework. ICONICS offers a complete set of Plug and Play automation components, including best-in-class OPC ActiveX® Controls, OPC Toolkit, Human Machine Interface (HMI), Microsoft SQL Server®–based data logging, Multimedia Alarming, and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) products. ICONICS is represented in over 50 countries and has in excess of 100,000 product installations worldwide. Visit us online at www.iconics.com.