The Long-Term Strategic Importance of Selecting The Most Viable Ethernet Fieldbus Standard

Long-Term Viability and Market Acceptance Scorecard Comparison

Just defining a standard is not sufficient to deliver on the promises that cost will be wrung out of the system, that all the components will be truly interoperable and will work in a plug-&-play fashion for consumers, and that the standard will become viable for the long term. The standard is only the prerequisite for success, but without many suppliers, there is less competition to wring the cost out of the system and there are fewer opportunities to increase the quality, interoperability, and robustness of the standard. Worse, without a market, consumers are less likely to adopt the standard, so there is no momentum for other suppliers to enter.

The standard will languish until the economics and openness are so compelling that both suppliers and consumers enter the market concurrently to prime the pump of market-wide adoption.

As a simple example, think of the PC. In early days, there were countless proprietary PCs. Suddenly, IBM broke with its own tradition of keeping design control and created the open de facto standard definition of the PC. In doing so IBM created markets for PCs and its components alike. IBM manufactured the PC but also enabled other companies to manufacture the PC too. The component manufacturers (floppy drives, hard drives, power supplies) and the PC manufacturers flourished, and the price of the PC dropped steadily. In contrast, Apple and others remained a closed system and didn’t benefit from the economies of scale that the PC did, so it didn’t enjoy the massive market share success.

A standard will only truly have long-term viability when it successfully creates a market of suppliers along with consumers that want to capitalize on the standard. The best way to measure which standard is the most promising and offers the best long-term viability is to examine its market penetration. Ultimately, the existence of a market around a specific real-time Ethernet fieldbus standard serves as proof that the standards body has successfully done its work, that consumers and others can create components that can plug and play and easily substitute, and that it will remain viable for the foreseeable future.

Thus far, we have focused on the methodology for how real-time Ethernet fieldbus standards can be evaluated for long-term success. Now, we will define the specific measure and conclude with a tabulation of the relative market strength of each standard.

This evaluation seeks to confirm that the standard is open and that the standards body exists, and to count the number of companies in the market. A strong market means a strong adoption of the standard. The following is our view of the key players that make up the supply chain of the real-time, Ethernet-based fieldbus market:

• Total member companies – manufacturers, ecosystem, and end users that support the standard
• Manufacturer companies – companies that make products that complement the standard
• Real-time component manufacturer – Companies that supply the critical element defined by the standard and required for the protocol to work:
• EtherCAT – EtherCAT Master and the EtherCAT Slave ASIC
• Ethernet/IP – Line controller to prevent collisions
• Ethernet Powerlink – CSMA/CD mechanism, Master (controller)
• PROFINET IRT – stations and special switches
• SERCOS – station with two communications ports
• Servo drive manufacturers
• I/O Manufacturers

It should be noted that these standards are occasionally evolved from a proprietary or non-Ethernet based standards, and the following table does NOT include counts for ALL of the standards suppliers, but rather the suppliers that contribute to the real-time Ethernet fieldbus components ONLY. However, total membership is not distinguishable between companies that became members due to its adoption of the first-generation proprietary protocol and the later generation open standard protocol. As a result, the numbers are simply included but can be deceiving if the protocol evolved from a proprietary protocol. (e.g. it is hard to distinguish members that joined Profibus Org for Profibus or PROFINET IRT purposes.)

	EtherCAT Standard	Ethernet/IP	Powerlink Standard	PROFINET IRT Standard	SERCOS Standard
STANDARDS BODY	EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG)	ODVA	Ethernet POWERLINK Standardization Group (EPSG)	PROFINET International (PI)	SERCOS International
TOTAL MEMBER COMPANIES (including non-Ethernet members)	3200	300	250	1400	90
MANUFACTURING MEMBER COMPANIES	500	30	25	80	90
REAL TIME PART MFG	180	2	10	6	3
SERVO DRIVE COMPANIES	150	5	9	12	7
I/O COMPANIES	100	8	5	6	4

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(Source: Standards body websites, Wikipedia and Public presentations, see appendix)

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