Media missives from Emerson Exchange 2025

With Emerson Exchange 2025 - the thought leadership event of global engineering services, industrial automation and technology giant Emerson - drawing to a close on May 22, the Oilholic enjoyed a fascinating and engaging week out in San Antonio, Texas, US. 

An action-packed week included insightful 1-on-1 discussions, panel chats, a product launch and wider interactions on the global energy and industry mix, and, where it is heading to with the "plant or factory of the future." 

All of The Oilholic's blog entries for Emerson Exchange may be found here. Yours truly also provided insight and an exclusive interview to Forbes from the event as detailed below. 

• Emerson To Seamlessly Integrate Its Industrial Automation Tech Stack, May 20, 2025
• $40 Billion Of Asset Deals In 4 Years, Room For More, Says Emerson COO, May 22, 2025

That's all for the moment folks. More musings to follow soon. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'! 

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To email: journalist_gsharma@yahoo.co.uk  

© Gaurav Sharma 2025. Photo: Emerson Exchange 2025 held at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, San Antonio, Texas, US. © Gaurav Sharma, May 2025. 

On AI and more at Emerson Exchange 2025

As the week progressed, Emerson Exchange 2025 came into its element sparking discussions under the event's core them of accelerating innovation. 

Over 300 presentations, client engagements and panels took place covering AI, automation, IIoT, predictive analytics, smart industrial equipment and more. 

The industrial sectors covered included traditional energy, renewables, power and utilities, chemicals, mining, pharmaceuticals, automotive, and food and beverage, but to name a few. 

Speaking of AI, the Oilholic moderated a TechTalk session titled - Industrial AI: Driving Smarter, Safer, and More Sustainable Operations. Subject matter experts on the panel included: Heiko Claussen, Chief Technologist, Emerson, Nate Harris, Global AI Sales Lead, Data & AI, Microsoft, Lynn Comp, Global Head of Sales for the AI Center of Excellence, Intel, and Clint Schneider, VP of Technology at Emerson's Final Control Business.

The panel touched on how AI is rapidly reshaping industrial operations, enabling predictive insights, process optimization and greater sustainability. At the heart of the discussions was AI deployment across the global industrial and manufacturing complex to enhance decision-making, improve efficiency and address complex operational challenges.

Cybersecurity and a re-skilling of the workforce - key facets of the ongoing industrial
transformation - also came under scrutiny, with a discussion on the workforce of the future and zero trust security architecture. 

Whichever way you look at it dear readers, in the quest for improved throughput and a lower carbon footprint (which are joined at the hip in the Oilholic's opinion) - an embedding of AI with safeguards into process systems, turning information and data into actionable insights, and a shift toward optimized autonomous operations are all but inevitable. 

Emerson is eyeing massive opportunities in this sphere and has been repositioning its business via acquisitions, divestments and bolt-on transactions worth $40bn in just the past four years alone. Here's this blogger's exclusive interview on the subject for Forbes with the company's Chief Operating Officer Ram Krishnan. 

The logic slots in particularly well in the case of the global oil and gas industry that's constantly learning to do more with less, at a time of cyclical volatility and lower oil prices.

And if you happened to tour the technology exhibits at Emerson Exchange, various solutions being showcased pointed to exactly that. 

Elsewhere, yours truly also hosted leadership conversations for Emerson on the sidelines of the event. Over a dozen members of the company's divisional and corporate leadership team kindly took part in the conversations to share their invaluable industry insight. 

As a teaser they included, Emerson COO Ram Krishnan, CSO Mike Train, CTO Peter Zornio, CMO Vidya Ramnath, and Emerson's AspenTech business CTO Claudio Fayad among others. The recordings will be published in due course by the Emerson team, and the Oilholic will alert you when they are online. So, watch this space. 

Well, that's a wrap from Emerson Exchange 2025 until next time. Its been a memorable, insightful and exciting week here in San Antonio. More musings to follow soon. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'! 

To follow The Oilholic on Twitter click here.

To follow The Oilholic on Forbes click here.

To email: journalist_gsharma@yahoo.co.uk  

© Gaurav Sharma 2025. Photo I: AI TechTalk at Emerson Exchange 2025. © Denise Clarke, May 2025. Photo II: Behind the scenes at the recording of Leadership Conversations with Emerson at Emerson Exchange 2025 hosted by Gaurav Sharma © Scott Leech / Brandspeak Communications, May 2025. 

Boundless automation at Emerson Exchange 2025

While the doors of Emerson Exchange 2025 opened on Monday, formal proceedings got underway on Tuesday morning with a keynote from Emerson CEO Lal Karsanbhai.

The global industrial technology and software vendor's boss said his industry is facing dynamic markets in an evolving industrial landscape. 

"Emerson is moving in the right direction with purpose, conviction and agility in automation, shaping what's next for global industries," he noted.

Flagging $40 billion worth of transactions from Emerson over the last four years, Karsanbhai said the company was also displaying remarkable agility from within via "boundless automation", and an ever improving offer of software premised integrated solutions that both the markets and his company's customers have come to expect of it. 

The Emerson CEO also lauded his company's acquisition of industrial software leader AspenTech for $7.2 billion because it supported "a software driven approach to shape the future direction of travel for Emerson."

To that end, Karsanbhai also delivered a teaser of 'Project Beyond' - Emerson's new product suite that seamlessly integrates its entire industrial automation technology stack. 

Following the keynotes came the formal launch of Project Beyond, hosted by yours truly alongside Peter Zornio, CTO of Emerson, Claudio Fayad, CTO of AspenTech, Nina Schwalb, Head of AspenTech DataWorks inmation, and Dave Denison, Vice President of Software Applications at Emerson Automation Solutions. 

The quartet described how Project Beyond brings industrial AI together with contextualized data across a diverse set of automation environments – embedded, edge and cloud – to "unlock flexibility, safety, sustainability and performance" to facilitate "boundless automation." 

For more details on the actual launch itself, here's this blogger's report for Forbes. At the launch, a statement by COO Ram Krishnan noted that Emerson was looking for an increased take-up of its integrated product offer from energy, power and utilities, chemicals, mining and pharmaceuticals. 

“Companies are eager to modernize automation and keep pace with the promise of new technologies like AI without ripping and replacing their existing infrastructure or dealing with the pain and costs of integrating new applications and millions of fragmented data points,” Krishnan added.

“Project Beyond will use the power of software-defined control to introduce an entirely new, scalable, seamlessly integrated infrastructure with automated data contextualization to turn trapped data into powerful operational efficiencies.”

Following the product launch, and the commencement of the conference program, the event's technology exhibition also opened its doors to visitors showcasing Emerson's hardware and software solutions based on the six "building blocks" of Project Beyond. 

They include - computing power, networking and connectivity, data operations, app marketplace, AI orchestration and a zero-trust security architecture for industries. Overall, an exciting day's outing with plenty more to follow soon. 

On that note, its time to say goodbye for now. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'! 

To follow The Oilholic on Twitter click here.

To follow The Oilholic on Forbes click here.

To email: journalist_gsharma@yahoo.co.uk  

© Gaurav Sharma 2025. Photo I: Lal Karsanbhai, CEO of Emerson delivers his keynote at Emerson Exchange 2025. © Gaurav Sharma, May 2025. Photo II: Launch of Emerson's 'Project Beyond' on May 20, 2025. © Keith Larson / Endeavor Business Media. Photo III: Glimpses of the technology exhibition at Emerson Exchange 2025 © Gaurav Sharma, May 2025.