EtherCAT is Most Successful
The Market Has Spoken: EtherCAT is Most Successful
The market has spoken, and EtherCAT has reached a tipping point of acceptance. EtherCAT is by far the most widely accepted and adopted real-time Ethernet fieldbus standard. As described in the technical section, EtherCAT offers the best price/performance. And in this section, the conclusion is that EtherCAT will be the most durable and cost-optimized standard because there is safety in numbers.
To identify the standard that has the best adoption and has the best long-term viability, we simply counted the number of suppliers that embrace and comply with the respective standards to understand whether a market of competition has been created that would lead to long-term viability. We also counted the number of consumers that signed up as members of a standards body and hoped this would serve as a proxy for the relative strength of consumer awareness. The best, most compelling, and most viable standard is simply the standard that has the most suppliers throughout entire supply chain along with the most consumers. EtherCAT stands apart.
It should be noted that just counting the number of consumers or number of deployments or the revenues associated with a standard is not, by itself, a good measure of the market acceptance. Often an industry titan can skew the perceived importance of its standard by offering such misleading statistics. A titan in industry can bundle its “standard” protocol with every device shipped to inflate the count. Sometimes consumers do not even know that the titan’s standard is embedded inside a device. The telltale sign of a successful standard is the market. Without suppliers, there is no free market competition and the consumer pays the price.
Importance of Machine Manufacturers in the Adoption Cycle
Finally, large equipment builders, manufacturing organizations, and sometimes governments play a critical role in creating the ideal conditions for a standard to reach a critical mass of acceptance that turns into a tipping point of broad adoption. Titans of industry often do not want standards that allow for the best-of-breed deployment, but would rather be the sole-source provider of a more lucrative whole solution. It is the super large end-user consuming organization with purchasing power that can mean the difference between the success of a standard or not.
EtherCAT Technology Group has Applied Materials and other large vendors to thank for driving the acceptance of EtherCAT. Applied Materials (AMAT), in particular, is one of the preeminent semiconductor companies in the world with about $8.7B in revenue in 2015. While it had relied on whole servo solutions from servo manufacturers for years, AMAT steadfastly told its suppliers that it was moving to EtherCAT, and if the servo manufacturers wanted to compete for the business, then the solution must be EtherCAT. Since so much revenue to the supplier organizations was at stake, they were forced to adopt the standard or risk being shut out by a competitor. And when the best suppliers in the world started supporting EtherCAT in order to win the AMAT business, other suppliers followed suit. Tipping point achieved.
Sometimes, governments can help a standard if they have similar purchasing power, while sometimes governments just recognize and follow the trend. The Chinese government is a good example. In 2012, China’s government recommended the Ethernet Powerlink as the standard real-time Ethernet fieldbus. At the time, it had momentum and had proven performance, so it seemed like a logical choice. Two years later, the China government reversed its decision and recommended the EtherCAT standard. The government recognized that EtherCAT had achieved critical mass of market penetration and delivered much better economic returns.
Conclusion
According to the respective organizations’ marketing collateral and each standard’s adopters and promoters, all real-time Ethernet fieldbus standards offer compelling and differentiated value. But this paper sought to determine which standard offer the best value and had the best chance of being viable in the long term. As we noted, if a company does not choose the best standard, it will be at a competitive disadvantage over time. This is why it is so important to get it right the first time.
The market has spoken: EtherCAT is the best, most valuable, and viable standard. It offers the best performance, price/performance, and has a critical mass of adopters by suppliers and end users. It is the adoption rate and breadth by the supply chain that truly distinguishes EtherCAT, and is the foundation for the projection that it will be the strongest standard in the market.
|
EtherCAT |
Ethernet/IP | Powerlink | PROFINET IRT | SERCOS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PERFORMANCE | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| PRICE/PERFORMANCE | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| MARKET ACCEPTED | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
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