'Powering Performance' at OPTIMIZE 26

It's a pleasure, as always, to be back in Houston for OPTIMIZE 26 - the flagship biennial event of Emerson's Aspen Technology business.

This year's event convenes under the core theme of 'Powering Performance.' It also happens to be the first in the series since AspenTech's acquisition by Emerson last year. 

The event has drawn delegates from over 40 countries, 20 industries and will have 150 sessions along two key content silos - process industries (the focus area for this blogger) and power & utilities, alongside an executive leadership track. 

As AI, big data and machine learning become an integral part of the energy and petrochemicals landscape, and talk of agentic AI gets louder, OPTIMIZE 26 is taking place at critical time for the sector, with many movers and shakers in town to discuss a software-led future for their companies. 

On Monday, the senior leadership of AspenTech were joined by many of those for the event's opening keynotes to apprise the industry of their latest efforts, and partnership with the software firm to improve throughput and efficiencies, reduce downtime, bring about predictive maintenance, and more. 

Vincent Servello, President of AspenTech, noted that for much of the process industries landscape, software has become mission critical. 

AspenTech is accelerating it's investment in AI, particularly so in the case of AI-driven asset performance management and the agentic AI environment, he added. 

Servello's remarks set the stall for key industry executives to offer their viewpoints. They included Dylan Pugh, Vice President of engineering at ExxonMobil, Adriano Alfani, CEO of Versalis, Emmanuelle Brechet, Vice President of data technologies at TotalEnergies. 

Servello and the industry executives were flanked by Claudio Fayad, CTO of Aspentech, Heiko Claussen, Chief Technologist, AspenTech and Vikas Dhole, SVP, Modeling & Optimization, AspenTech. 

The AspenTech spokespeople emphasised on leveraging data and software to enhance agility, efficiency and autonomy across industries at a time of rising uncertainties, complicated geopolitics and volatile input costs. 

In a fireside chat with AspenTech President Servello, Pugh of ExxonMobil, touched on why software had become a differentiator but also expressed his thoughts on smart, strategic deployment of it and not opting for AI solutions just for the fear of missing out. 

In an exchange with AspenTech CTO Fayad, Alfani of Versalis explained how software solutions and its partnership with AspenTech helped the company's shift from base chemicals to biochem and circularity at its European assets, where the traditional chemicals segment was proving to be very challenging. 

And in a presentation, Brechet of TotalEnergies, spoke on how software was central to the French supermajor's drive to boost operational excellence, save costs, and reduce emissions. Overall, a great start to the event. That's all for now folks! More musings to follow soon. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'! 

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© Gaurav Sharma 2026. Photo I: Energy analyst Gaurav Sharma at OPTIMIZE 26 in Houston, US. Photo II:  Vincent Servello, President of AspenTech (left) in a fireside chat with Dylan Pugh, Vice President of Engineering at ExxonMobil. Photo III: AspenTech CTO Claudio Fayad (left) with Adriano Alfani, CEO of Versalis. © Gaurav Sharma, May 2026.

Revisiting 'EcoStruxure' At Schneider Electric's Innovation Summit

Earlier this month the Oilholic had the pleasure of attending a Schneider Electric event after a gap of nearly six years - the company's Innovation Summit in Paris, France. 

A lot has happened since this blogger last attended a Schneider event. The inimitable Jean-Pascal Tricoire has moved on from being CEO to the Chairman of the company, with former AVEVA boss Peter Herweck now in the boss' chair. 

But one constant has been the company's relentless development and marketing of its Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) architecture - EcoStruxure - conceived to deliver "smart" automation and digitization solutions within the energy sphere for a plethora of industrial, manufacturing and processing clients. 

So it was a pleasure to receive two use case demonstrations of how the product suite is being applied and has evolved since the turn of the decade. For this blogger, the company's EcoStruxure Automation Expert, a software-centric industrial automation system, and EcoStruxure Hybrid Distributed Control System  (formerly branded as PlantStruxure PES), a single automation system to engineer, operate, and maintain a plant's entire infrastructure, stood out amidst a sea of solutions and myriad use cases. 

These were use cases for a "sustainable, productive and market-agile" future that the company envisions for the wider industrial and manufacturing complex, according to CEO Herweck, who in his keynote, noted that: "Being more electrical, being more digital, means being more efficient."

And "Digital + Electric = A Sustainable Future" was the simple equation put forward by Herweck for a world facing the complex issue of managing carbon emissions. 

Here's a Forbes report summing up Herweck's comments in Paris. It was also revealed at the Innovation Summit that Schneider Electric was driving up its R&D spend from 5.4% to around 8% of headline revenue. The company is also practicing what it preaches by converting key facilities into the very sort of "smart factories" it is recommending to the world, something the Oilholic intends to revisit later down the year.  

Elsewhere, your truly also got to grips with a number of fascinating home energy management software solutions and applications alongside battery inverters (used as a way to control flow of electricity in residential properties) and allied smart home concepts. 

Commercial power management software and hardware, grid operations software, artificial intelligence (AI) powered monitoring systems, datacenter cooling systems, and electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure displays and demos at the exhibition floor completed an interesting and informative visit. 

Or a glimpse of a digitized and electrified horizon, as the company's C-Suites and public relations executives will tell you! And on that note, its time to say goodbye. More musings to follow soon. Keep reading, keep it here, keep it 'crude'! 

Additional note 25.04.24: Here's yours truly's recently published interview with Barbara Frei, Executive Vice President, Industrial Automation at Schneider Electric following a meeting in Paris. 

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© Gaurav Sharma 2024. Photo I: A Schneider Electric EcoStruxure display at the company's Innovation Summit in Paris, France. Photo II: Schneider Electric CEO Peter Herweck delivering his keynote. Photo III: Sustainability message dominated proceedings, Apr 3-4, 2024. © Gaurav Sharma 2024.