Press Kit

2013

PRESS CONTACT:

Pauline VETTIER Marketing officer

pauline.vettier@automationsquare.com Tel. +33 (0)4 76 23 43 20

Itris Automation Square

2, Square Roger Genin 38000 Grenoble

France Tel: 04 76 23 43 20

Fax: 04 76 23 43 21

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SUMMARY

I – The Itris Automation Square company ....................................................................3

1- Identity ..................................................................................................................................3

2- Introduction of the company, Itris Automation Square .............................................4

a. Itris Automation Square : An editor of innovative software ................................................ 4

b. Outlook and objectives .............................................................................................................. 4

II – Market and Technology .............................................................................................6

1- Introducing PLCs ................................................................................................................6

2- An innovative technological approach ..........................................................................6

III – Range of tools offered by Itris Automation Square ............................................8

1- PLC Checker ........................................................................................................................8

2 - PLC Converter .......................................................................................................................9

3 - PLC DocGen ........................................................................................................................ 10

IV – Appendices ...............................................................................................................11

1- Press releases ................................................................................................................... 11

a) Itris Automation Square joins the CSIA: The professional Control System Integrators

Association ......................................................................................................................................... 11

b) Itris Automation Square recruits Mr Sangmin Lee as its Director of International

Business Development ..................................................................................................................... 12

2- Clients references ............................................................................................................ 13

3- Client testimonials............................................................................................................ 14

4- Biography of Managers in Itris Automation Square .................................................. 15

a. Éric Pierrel, CEO ........................................................................................................................ 15

b. Denis Chalon, Technical Director ........................................................................................... 15

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I – The Itris Automation Square company

1- Identity

Name Itris Automation Square

Date of Creation February 2008

Localisation Headquarters:

2, Square Roger Genin

38000 Grenoble - France

Managers Éric PIERREL, President and CEO

Denis CHALON, Technical Director

Governance Itris Automation Square is a simplified joint stock company under

French Law.

It is owned by its managers and employees, and by a minority of

business angels.

Key Figures Social capital : 180 K€

2012 turnover : 539 K€

Activity Software editor: tools for the development and the improvement of

PLC programs quality.

Company size On December 31st, 2012 : 11 employees

Services Itris Square Automation provides solutions for the conversion,

verification and documentation of PLC programs.

Marketed as Software-as-a-Service, its tools can improve the

quality of programs and reduce the costs of development, testing

and maintenance.

These tools are based on innovative technologies and a team

renowned for its specialist skills in software engineering, and

extensive experience in the field of automation.

Clients references Itris Automation Square solutions have been adopted by industry

leaders such as Compagnie Nationale du Rhône, Clemessy,

Schneider Electric, DNV, Ineo, EDF, Snecma, Tetra Pak, GDF

Suez, DCNS, Actemium, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Spie, Sanofi

Pasteur, Areva…

Website http://www.automationsquare.com/

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2- Introduction of the company, Itris Automation Square

a. Itris Automation Square : An innovative software editor

What do car assembly lines, elevator machineries, hydroelectric dams, bottling lines,

continuous casters and ventilation of indoor parking have in common? All these industrial

and commercial installations are controlled by PLCs. Itris Automation Square, a French

company based in Grenoble, was created in 2008 to provide tools for PLC programming.

Behind the creation of Itris Automation Square was the will to continue to industrialize a

technology developed by the previous company (“Itris”) during the 2000s: GLIPS, a

technological environment independent from platforms and specific PLC language

providers. The emergence of this technology has been permitted by a double competence

from the R&D team: automation and software engineering. The purpose of this

combination of skills was to bring to the field of automation the power of development

methods used in related sectors, such as real-time computing.

The R&D team has orchestrated the development of several software tools, used by all

automation engineers. These innovative and unique solutions for automatic translation of

PLC code, for documentation and quality measurement were very well received. Indeed, the

market quickly perceived them as strong differentiators in the development and conversion of

PLC programs. Productivity, quality and responsiveness have quickly become the

trademark of IAS.

b. Outlook and objectives

Itris Square Automation focuses on industrialization and production of software engineering

technology, which is part of its DNA. In recent years, R&D efforts have led to the emergence

of tools that always meet the market’s needs: IAS solutions have been packaged in the

form of three key tools (detailed page 8-10). In parallel, the marketing approach allowed to

rethink its offer, to identify the most suitable business model for the market, and to establish

a wide network of local, national and international partners.

Specifically, the business model chosen by IAS is "Software as a Service" (SaaS). In this

software distribution model, software publishers host services for their clients, who will then

use them via the Internet. Thus, IAS’ customers do not pay for owning the software but to

use it. It is not necessary to invest to benefit from the contributions of new technologies. In

addition, the total cost (Total Cost of Ownership) is greatly reduced because there is no new

version to install, no fleet management license etc. Finally, the client simply estimates the

actual cost of the service.

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The objective of IAS is to meet the coming challenges that have to do with increasingly

sophisticated PLC programs, with respect to three criteria: cost control of the entire

software life cycle, taking into account existing facilities (since many automation projects fall

under renovation or extension of facilities) and maintaining or improving the quality of these

programs.

This objective is valid worldwide and in all areas of applications. Indeed, the solutions offered

by IAS support the leading PLCs in the market (Schneider Electric, Rockwell Automation,

Siemens ...) and are, by nature, solutions independent from the business context.

To achieve these objectives, IAS is based on:

An undeniable technological advance in the field of software engineering applied to

the development of PLC programs,

A team with solid experience in the technical and commercial development of

software tools,

A deep knowledge of the target markets and the needs of automation engineers,

A market awaiting solutions to overcome the limitations of current development

methods,

Sustainable partnerships with industry leader clients and with key technology players,

such as PLC manufacturers.

The tools aim to serve the market, covering increasingly important ranges of PLCs and

increasing the analytical capacities of tools. These changes are mainly the result of

collaborative R&D projects (such as FUI, “Fonds Unique Interministériel” or “Unique

Interministerial Fund”). In addition, IAS wants to continue to integrate its tools with other

software in the field of automation, such as workshops manufacturers, system design tools,

dashboards and quality management version tools.

Finally, IAS continues to be rooted in its technology and R&D ecosystem. At local and

national levels, IAS’ involvement in the clusters Minalogic, Grilog and EDEN allows the

company to participate to R&D projects that increase the technology value of its offer, and

allow for better visibility.

Internationally, Itris Automation Square has been a member of the CSIA since 2012

("Control System Integrators Association"), a global professional organization based in

Wisconsin (USA). The CSIA has over 400 control systems integrator companies and

suppliers of automated software tools

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II – Market and Technology

1- Introducing PLCs

PLCs control processes, or combinations of processes, by sending commands in the form of

electrical signals in response to input data. They are used in various industries such as

manufacturing, chemicals, transport or production and distribution of energy. Operations

controlled by PLCs can vary widely in complexity, from simple control panel to a fully

automated production system.

PLC programming takes place in a context of high requirements for quality and reliability,

related to economic and human security. Indeed, a "bug" in a PLC programs can have

serious consequences ranging from stopping production to losses of human lives. PLC

programs are becoming more complex and the problem of reducing costs is omnipresent.

Unfortunately, the current criteria for measuring quality are often inadequate. Conventional

methods of programming cannot solve this problem. In fact, they are still composed of many

manual tasks, prohibiting systematic verification. In addition, each PLC manufacturer is

associated with a development language and environment of its own. All these issues do not

facilitate the production of quality codes at reasonable cost, whereas the industries that use

PLCs operate in a very competitive environment.

The innovative approach of Itris Automation Square solves these problems by

proposing new solutions to produce programs of better quality that are

reusable, while reducing development and maintenance costs.

2- An innovative technological approach

The current development tools used have seen only few innovations in the field of software

engineering to create applications that are secure, reusable and easily maintainable. These

limitations come from the languages used to program PLC, which are proprietary and

incompatible. The goal of the GLIPS technology - which serves as a hub for all tools developed

by IAS, is to go beyond the limitations of these languages.

Figure 1: Programmable Logic Controllers of Omron, Siemens and Schneider Electric brand

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To address the challenges encountered while programming PLCs, Itris Automation Square

offers a new and innovative technological approach. GLIPS by Itris Automation Square is

based on a technological platform that is independent from the PLC types and

programming languages.

GLIPS technology has been designed to meet precise specifications, such as reducing and

controlling the costs of developing and maintaining command and control software, while

taking into account all aspects of the life cycle.

Figure 2: GLIPS technology, a central element in IAS offer

One of the main benefits of this approach is the consideration of existing technology assets.

Indeed, to benefit from the power of the GLIPS technology, it is not necessary to rewrite or

remodel programs: they are automatically imported in this format.

Around this technology platform, Itris Automation Square has developed tools that meet

market needs for renovation of automated installations and PLC code quality. These tools

enable the translation of code from a type of PLC to another, and the compliance of a

program to coding and design rules.

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III – Range of tools offered by Itris Automation Square

Itris Automation Square offers three main tools that aim at improving the quality of PLC

programs and reduce their cost of development and maintenance:

PLC Checker: automatically analyses PLC programs and exhaustively validates their

compliance with sets of coding rules.

PLC Converter: automatically translates a PLC program to a new PLC.

PLC DocGen: automatically generates a dataflow oriented view of a PLC program

(from inputs towards outputs) represented by equations and flowcharts.

1- PLC Checker

PLC Checker automatically analyzes PLC programs and comprehensively verifies their

compliance with generic rules and – if needed, rules specific to an industry or a given

process.

PLC Checker also provides an online collaborative environment that allows contractors to

follow the progress of the development of their programs.

Using PLC Checker replaces manual compliance checks, which took considerable time and

did not provide the level of quality required. With PLC Checker, it is now possible to adopt

systematic coding standards and thus ensure consistency between programs while ensuring

a certain robustness and readability of the application.

PLC Checker makes it possible to resolve the current dilemma: having a high level of quality

requirement and spending a lot of time and money on it, or having little time (or money) and

having to settle for minimum quality requirements.

Figure 3: Screenshot of PLC Checker - Example of rules

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In customer/supplier relationships, PLC Checker allows to define the quality requirements to

be achieved. PLC Checker also helps to define code reviews (fully automated in a static

analysis) to achieve the right to verify compliance with these requirements. When using PLC

Checker, integrators gain credibility by demonstrating the quality of their programs through

the most innovative solutions on the market. Industrial PLC users benefit from automated

programs that are more easily maintainable and can objectively measure the quality of their

programs.

In addition, PLC Checker is also useful in a normative context (FDA, IEC 61511 ...), to

demonstrate proper compliance with quality processes, especially when using coding rules is

required.

2 - PLC Converter

Maintaining old PLCs is often impossible: hardware becomes obsolete, old PLC parts are

difficult to find and human resource become scarce. Migrating PLCs is thus necessary to

ensure the durability of industrial facilities. Also, new generations of PLCs bring more

features and better performances to support evolving processes.

Unfortunately, new generations of PLCs also often come with new programming languages,

which are incompatible with previous generations of PLCs. As a consequence, programs

used in old PLCs also become obsolete, even if the process controlled by the PLC remains

the same. Thus, it is often necessary to rewrite completely the application or to invest

in many hours of manual translation of the program.

To address this issue, Itris Automation Square created PLC Converter, a tool that allows

automatic translation of PLC programs. Thanks to its tool’s capability to understand the

semantics of PLC applications, Itris Automation Square generates a very high quality code,

with the same behavior as the previous application. PLC Converter provides identical

functionality, and reliability is very important. Validation of the translated code is then less

expensive and it is easy to compare the performance of old and new systems. Downtime of

the system related to the commissioning of the new program is greatly reduced.

The datasheet on PLC Checker is available to read and download on our SlideShare account.

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3 - PLC DocGen

During its whole lifecycle, a typical PLC program will be read and modified by many

contributors: development and commissioning teams, maintenance and modernization

technicians, engineers, project managers... All will have to quickly and easily understand a

program they often didn’t develop themselves, especially if they start a new job from some

legacy code.

Being efficient when modifying some unknown and sophisticated code is always a challenge.

Writing documentation manually is also tedious and error-prone.

PLC DocGen brings greater consistency in the format of the documentation and the

repetitive dimension of writing.

PLC DocGen automatically generates a dataflow oriented view of a PLC program (from

inputs towards outputs) represented by equations and flowcharts, thus abstracting the actual

sequential execution of the program. This view is a perfect intermediate formalism between

specifications and the code itself.

PLC DocGen is available for programs for the following PLC: April Orphée, SMC, TSX Serie7

and Unity (Premium, Quantum and M340) marketed by Schneider Electric, as well as the

PLCs Step5 and Step7 and marketed by Siemens.

Figure 4: Example of documentation generated by the tool PLC DocGen

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IV – Appendices

1- Press releases

a) Itris Automation Square joins the CSIA: The professional

Control System Integrators Association

Grenoble, France, July 30th, 2012 - Itris Automation Square, creator of innovative

solutions for the development of PLC programs, is now a member of the CSIA (Control

System Integrators Association).

The “Control System Integrators Association” (www.controlsys.org) is a professional and

global association based in Wisconsin (USA). It gathers over 400 control systems integrator

companies and suppliers of automated software tools. Its activities include certification,

organizing events and establishing best practices, which are published in professional

guides.

Since 1994, CSIA seeks to advance business practices of control system integration, by:

Bringing successful system integration to the marketplace by creating recognition and demand for CSIA certified members,

Improving system integration best practices and performance, Providing a forum to share industry expertise and create networking

opportunities.

By joining the CSIA, Itris Automation Square aims to develop its network with integrators,

especially in the U.S., and benefit from the support of an expert organization to facilitate the

distribution of its tools. Indeed, system integrators are in the best position to offer services

around Itris Automation Square’s tools, especially on program quality-related issues.

Éric Pierrel, General Manager of Itris Automation Square, explains: "We are very pleased to

have joined the CSIA, and are confident regarding the opportunities that will arise on the

North American market. Besides, during the second quarter 2012 and for the first time, we

have carried out a program conversion for a U.S. integrator, based in Florida".

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b) Itris Automation Square recruits Mr Sangmin Lee as its Director of International Business Development

Grenoble - France, October 11th, 2012 - Itris Automation Square (IAS), provider of

innovative solutions for the development of PLC programs, announces the

recruitment of a new team member.

Itris Automation Square is pleased to announce the recruitment of Mr. Sangmin Lee, as its

Director of International Business Development.

Mr. Lee joined the team in Q2 2012 and is specifically in charge of

developing business opportunities on the North America and

APAC markets.

This hiring is part of the business actions that aim at strengthening the

international development of the company. It will also reinforce the

current team with a senior member, who has extensive work experience

in international environments.

Mr. Lee has 15+ years of international business management experience, having held

key management positions at software and high-tech companies, such as Samsung

Electronics, LexisNexis, and RealNetworks.

Mr. Lee holds an MS in Computer Science from George Washington University (US) and

received a BA degree in Chinese language and literature from Choon Ang University

(Korea). Mr. Lee speaks English, Korean, Japanese, Chinese and French. He is a Korean

native and resides in Grenoble with his French wife and daughter.

Éric Pierrel, General Manager of Itris Automation Square, explains: "The arrival of Sangmin

Lee is very important for Itris Automation Square, as developing international market access

is key to our company. We especially see a strong interest in APAC and North America for

PLC Checker, our static analyser for PLC programs, and expect both these markets to fuel

our growth in the coming years".

Mr Lee can be contacted directly at: sangmin.lee@automationsquare.com.

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2- Clients references

Itris Automation Square’ solutions have been adopted by industry leaders, such as:

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3- Client testimonials

Mr Laurent MAUGUY Automation Standards Manager

PSA Peugeot Citroën

M. Pascal POTHIER

New Construction Project Manager Herakles (groupe Safran)

Today at PSA, the systematic use of PLC Checker is part of a comprehensive approach to

improve quality and maintainability of control systems […] The verification time is considerably shorter: our subcontractors and our engineers have fewer

discussions to reach consistent programs.

We use PLC Checker on PLCs that we replace when renovating production units. It has allowed us to take a “picture” of the quality of the programs, before and after replacement […]. PLC Checker allows us to measure software quality. We had been requiring software quality for a long time, but we had so far little means of

control over it.

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4- Biography of Managers at Itris Automation Square

a. Éric Pierrel, President and CEO

Eric graduated from Grenoble Ecole de Management (GEM) in 2001, and

has since specialized in management of technology and innovation. He

began his career as an Operational Marketing Officer at PolySpace

Technologies, a software company in the field of embedded systems. He

then supported the business growth of the start-up in a highly international

context, and held various managerial positions in marketing and

administrative fields.

Following the acquisition of PolySpace Technologies by The MathWorks in 2007, he

participated in the merger of the two companies. He then joined Itris Automation Square

(IAS) in 2008, a software company in the field of programmable logic controllers. He served

as Marketing Director and Chief Financial Officer. Eric has been at the head of IAS since

March 2011 and currently holds the position of President and CEO.

Involved in several networks to develop the IT industry in Grenoble, Eric is also a member of

the Board of Directors of Minalogic (global competitiveness cluster) and an active member of

the Grilog association (GRenoble Isère LOGiciel), which brings together stakeholders in the

software industry in Grenoble. He is also the President of the Alumni Association of Grenoble

Ecole de Management.

b. Denis Chalon, Technical Director

Denis graduated from the ENSIMAG Grenoble (National School of

Computer Science and Applied Mathematics of Grenoble) in 1996. He

began his career at Hewlett Packard in Grenoble in the PC division of the

company, where he was responsible for software bricks card networks in

connection with the international suppliers of the company. He then joined

the renowned HP Labs, in which he filed for six patents and several

publications.

Denis has been a R&D Engineer at Itris since 2003. He participated in the development of

the GLIPS technology, which serves as the foundation for the company’s products. Since

2010, following the takeover of Itris by Itris Automation Square, Denis manages the technical

team and organizes brick production technology.

In addition, Denis is also responsible for the technical evaluation of collaborative projects

within Minalogic. He contributes actively to debates and discussions on free software and

intellectual property issues of the software.