International partner three years running!

SolutionsPT has been honoured by industry giant, Automation Control Products (ACP). ACP is a global leader in the automation industry, providing full-feature centralised thin client and terminal server management software.

SolutionsPT product manager Rob Dinsmore and system architect Chris whitehead, receiving the award from Matt Crandell president and CEO of ACP and Keith Jones, international sales director.

SolutionsPT has been named as ACP’s International Partner of the Year for the third year running at ACP’s prestigious Channel Partner Awards. Rob Dinsmore, Product Manager, accepted the award on behalf of SolutionsPT at the ACP annual global conference, Thindustrial15, in Orlando, USA. SolutionsPT was recognised as the most successful distributor outside of the United States.

Keith Jones, director at ACP International, added: “ACP’s prestigious Channel Partner awards are given to those partners who have performed exceptionally - not only in sales performance, but also customer satisfaction, growth and vision. This year’s International Partner of the Year, SolutionsPT, excelled in all these areas and have justifiably earned their third such award.”

Rob Dinsmore said: “It is great to see that all our hard work over the last 12 months has paid off and to be recognised for the third year running by a major industry player such as ACP is a real honour. ACP is an industry leading company and we are proud to distribute its products and encourage the growth of thin client architecture in the industrial automation industries in the United Kingdom and Ireland.”

During the event, ACP also announced the launch of ThinManager 8. The new ThinManager includes support for Active Directory and continues to operate with the Relevance mobile platform which allows modern facilities to create location-based work environments to deliver content to the right person, in the right location and at the right time. The new release will also include support for Android-based mobile tablets, as well as continued support for Apple iPads and iPhones.

On the new launch, SolutionsPT’s Rob Dinsmore added: “The launch of ThinManager 8 is a great step in the field of mobility. Whilst it is still very much an early adopter trend, we work with a number of larger and more advanced companies implementing mobility solutions. This new release will increase compatibility and, in opening up the Android market, reduce cost. Importantly for a number of our customers, unlike Apple, Android products qualify for ATEX safety ratings meaning they can be used across a wider variety of locations.”

Double win for industrial automation partners

SolutionsPT and NeoDyne rewarded by ACP

SolutionsPT and its system integrator partner, NeoDyne, have both been honoured by industry giant, Automation Control Products (ACP). 

SolutionsPT, based in Cheadle (GB), has been named as ACP’s International Partner of the Year and NeoDyne, of Cork (IRL), has received the International Integrator of the Year award. 

Rob Dinsmore, SolutionsPT; Martin Farrell, NeoDyne; Matt Crandell and Keith Jones, ACP.

Rob Dinsmore, Product Manager, accepted the award on behalf of SolutionsPT at the ACP annual global conference, Thindustrial13, in Atlanta, USA. It was given in recognition of SolutionsPT being more successful than any other distributor outside the United States.

Rob Dinsmore, and Matt Crandell.

He said: “It is great to see that all our hard work over the last 12 months has paid off and to be recognised by a major industry player such as ACP is a real honour.

“ACP is a forward thinking company and we are proud to distribute its products and encourage the growth of thin client architecture in the industrial automation industries in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It’s also great to be recognised alongside NeoDyne who we work with very closely.”

NeoDyne’s coveted award is in recognition of two of its major client wins in the food and beverage sector, for which SolutionsPT has provided both the ACP software and the Thin Client hardware.”

Martin Farrell, Automation Director of NeoDyne, added: “NeoDyne identified that the widespread adoption of virtualisation for industrial automation platforms created a demand for matching strength terminal server solutions. Working with SolutionsPT, we have used ACP as a differentiator when we offer these solutions to our customers. As a systems integrator, we have found that ACP has simplified thin client hardware installation and commissioning and has enabled our customer’s automation engineers to support the systems going forward without the need for assistance from IT.  We believe that this has helped grow our client base and ultimately why we have won this award.”

ACP is manufacturer of ThinManager, the thin client and terminal services management system.

Says ACP CEO Matt Crandell, presenting the award, “ACP’s International business is growing at an exceptional rate in part due to the abilities and integrity of our ecosystem partners.  NeoDyne is an exemplary example of such a partner. In 2012 NeoDyne was awarded, and successfully implemented two installations of ThinManager with two new customers in the food & beverage industry”.

He added: “SolutionsPT is also a great example of such a distributor. They truly understand the value our products offer which has certainly helped to drive growth in the UK and Ireland.”

Video productivity software expanded

Console screens and operator actions on ACP thin clients can be captured, stored and reviewed.

Longwatch's video productivity suite of software can now work with any ACP enabled thin client. This includes the Longwatch Video Historian, live and archived video, and the Console Recorder.

With the Console Recorder, customers can now record thin client screens for use by operations for trouble shooting, training, and compliance.This unit , when used with ACP enabled thin clients, helps customers reduce downtime and see exactly what their operators were viewing during shutdown, line stoppages and other system events.

The Longwatch Console Recorder software records what is seen on the ACP thin client, and the operator’s responses on the keyboard and mouse, but does not have any impact on terminal services sessions or servers.

Managers and supervisors can view recorded screens to determine what really happened during an “event” from the operator’s perspective. The Console Recorder can synchronize recorded video from the operator console with manufacturing databases and process historians, so that when managers and supervisors view the recorded operator screens, they can also view archived data from the historian or databases on additional thin client screens. This is extremely valuable when doing root cause analysis and troubleshooting, because it recreates the event. The recordings can also be used as a training tool for new operators or to share with operators for continuous improvement.

A major benefit of an ACP ThinManager system is that the main Longwatch software application resides on a secure central server, which can support multiple ThinManager stations. The ThinManager terminals do not host the software, so a customer does not have to worry about making software or security upgrades on multiple systems.

Because a single ACP thin client device can support up to five monitors, a user in one location can view one or more video screens plus displays from multiple applications running on the main server or on other computers on the network.

Running Longwatch video software in conjunction with a thin client is seamless from the administrator or operator perspective. The Longwatch Console Recording Engine interacts with the thin client software without any changes to the ACP system overall. The result is the same as capturing screens from a standard PC; that is, menus, commands and screens appear and react exactly the same to user entries from a keyboard, touchscreen or mouse.

“Because the ACP system is seamless, customers running a Longwatch console monitoring software with major HMI/SCADA platforms, such as Wonderware, Intellution, TheFix, or ClearSCADA, can implement a thin client application without any changes to the HMI or Longwatch software,” says Steve Rubin, president of Longwatch.

Tim Caine, chief technical officer at Automation Control Products (ACP), says, “ACP is very excited that the integration with the Longwatch product has been completed. The ability to record sessions from ACP enabled thin clients will prove to be a very useful function for end users in a wide variety of plant floor installations.”