Manufacturing App Developer Aveva Opens Full Software Portfolio To Channel Partners

The launch of the new Aveva Select program creates opportunities for industrial distributor resellers to sell the company’s entire line of software beyond its Wonderware manufacturing plant operation applications.

Industrial software developer Aveva is giving its approximately 100 industrial distributor partners the ability to sell the company’s entire product portfolio under the vendor’s Aveva Select program.

The Aveva Select announcement, slated to be made today, will give industrial resellers the ability to expand beyond the plant operations applications they currently carry to include an extensive range of software including process manufacturing and asset performance management applications.

The distributors, most of whom have sold the plant operation applications for years under their original Wonderware brand, now work closely with Aveva and even operate under “doing business as” names that include Aveva.

[Related: PTC Vet Kerry Grimes Joins Schneider Electric’s Aveva To Lead Global Partner Program]

“We utilize their sales and support structure for supporting our customers,” said Kerry Grimes, Aveva head of global partners, in an exclusive interview with CRN.

“The benefit of carrying the full portfolio is they can bring something new to their customers – it gives them a whole new portfolio to talk about,” Grimes said. “It allows for additional up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.”

In 2018 French giant Schneider Electric, which owned Wonderware and its products after a series of acquisitions, acquired a 60 percent stake in Aveva and transferred its Schneider Electric Software assets – including the Wonderware portfolio – to the company.

Today Aveva operates as an independent subsidiary of Schneider Electric and about 90 percent of its Wonderware sales are through the 100 or so industrial resellers.

Today, however, Aveva has a huge portfolio of industrial applications that go beyond the original Wonderware plant operations software to include software for designing and building manufacturing plants, managing plant operations, and managing the performance of industrial assets. The company even offers Internet of Things and industrial IoT (IIoT) software.

The applications are used across a range of process industries including oil and gas, chemicals, power and utilities, food and beverage, and wastewater treatment. The applications often play a critical role as process manufacturers look to upgrade their facilities, more fully automate their operations and launch digital transformation initiatives, according to Grimes.

Aveva puts the potential North American market for its software at more than $1 billion. Data from the ARC Advisory Group shows that the channel market for industrial automation software has grown at a 21 percent CAGR over the last 15 years.

But until now the 100 or so industrial distributors have been limited to selling just the original Wonderware line. That’s changing with the launch of the Aveva Select program that gives the channel partners access to the entire Aveva product lineup and expands the vendor’s market reach, Grimes said.

“The launch of the new Aveva Select program comes at a time when industrial customer demand for digital transformation is growing exponentially and it will create new opportunities for the customer base,” said Bob D’Agostino, president of Aveva Select North, one of the distributors that previously went under the name Wonderware North.

“With the new Aveva Select program we can confidently grow the partner network from strength to strength by offering real value for our strategic technology partners, distributors, systems integrators and many more, enabling our network members to work better together to help their customers create increased business value,” said Jason Bass, president of Aveva Select Central, formerly Wonderware West.

The program will help “extend the capabilities of the Aveva offering to a new and previously untapped partner audience,” he said in a statement.

Aveva Select will also help the industrial resellers strengthen their brand association with the vendor as the company invests in the Aveva brand, Grimes said. About 20 of the 100 should be onboard with the program by the end of the year, working with the company’s full product lineup, with “the vast majority” in the program by the end of 2021, Grimes said.

Nine of the industrial distributors are in North America with the rest based around the world, according to Grimes.

Aveva Select is separate from the Aveva Partner Network, the company’s broader channel program that includes some 5,000 global and regional systems integrators who implement Aveva applications. Those partners generally don’t resell the applications, leaving the sales process to the industrial distributors, according to Grimes.

The Aveva Partner Network is “a hub for the latest thinking on performance management of manufacturing operations and today it is utilized for the sharing of best practices with the partner community as well as harnessing their collective insights to help solve some of the world’s most complex industrial manufacturing issues,” D’Agostino said in a statement.

Aveva is in the process of acquiring OSIsoft, which develops the PI System data management software that will be integrated with the rest of Aveva’s applications once the acquisition is completed. The OSIsoft applications will also be available to industrial distributor partners once the acquisition is completed.