What You Want to Read-- A Recap of My Top Posts

You, my readers, are the ultimate determinator (is that even a word??) of what we write.  When I look at the posts I've had over the past year or so, the content that you seem to respond to isn't necessarily the heavy duty, technical specs and product details of the wonderful portfolio of software products that Invensys Operations Management offers.  Instead, it's a higher level, socially conscious view of what's going on in the world of industrial automation.

The post with the highest level of reads, to date, was my January post on Why Recovery is Imminent in the US.  http://invensysopsapplications.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-recovery-is-imminent-in-us.html.  Now this makes me happy, because it tells me that you are optimistic about the state of manufacturing, and since then, there have been a plethora of similar articles all stating that recovery is indeed occuring. 

The other posts with strong readership dealt with Microsoft technology/the cloud, big data, and  mobility. These are the three big trends in industrial software/automation, and these subjects reflect that: the cloud (less cost of ownership, better scalability, accessibility); big data (leveraging the data you have, rolling it up, rationalizing, and presenting "information") and lastly mobility, the ability to access information, reports, and analytics on smart devices, tablets that can travel with you, and feed you information when you need it and where you need it.

So the posts you read the most are on taking the investments you have, and making more of them.  They are about changing the way you do business--not in a dramatic, "throw everything out and start again" mode, but in an incremental, building-block mode, taking what you have, learning from it, and then building out to create a system that works for you.

Certainly, there are some technical changes that are occurring in our industry: the retirement of Windows XP (April 2014), the introduction of SQL 2012, and we as consumers need to be mindful, and plan, for these changes.  But the days of a clean slate don't seem to be there.  And that's OK.  In fact, that is what makes sense for us.  So we'll keep publishing those articles you care about.  And if there are things I'm not covering--please let me know.