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 M&A 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 the markets and his company's customers have come to expect of it.
The Emerson CEO also lauded his company's acquisition of 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'!
© Gaurav Sharma 2025. Photo I: Lal Karsanbhai, CEO of Emerson delivers his keynote at Emerson Exchange 2025. Photo II: Launch of Emerson's 'Project Beyond' on May 20, 2025. Photo III: Glimpses of the technology exhibition at Emerson Exchange 2025 © Gaurav Sharma, May 2025.