Keith Nosbusch - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Analyst · FTN Midwest Securities. Please proceed
The answer is yes, and that brings to good point, let me character, one would expect that we are growing in process dramatically, why wouldn't logics be growing faster, just because of that. And, so let me polish a little bit of what process is doing and hopefully, it'll put a little more explanation into, I think, your question John. First off, in process that's where we have our largest NES or pure information software segment, being the life sciences vertical. And so that is not a logic centric sale in the life sciences segment, and that's probability 20% or so of our process business. So that is not our logic rich environment. The other thing that is occurring is that, to your point, we are seeing significant amounts of legacy replacement of historical DCS systems, when customers do that they don't rip out the entire system. What they do is they replace, we'll call it the processor, but not all the I/O. And so you end up having a much smaller logic content in that initial replacement because it's just the software and it's just the processor and the I/O stays wired for now and that becomes an installed base transition as time goes on. So you don't have the same richness that you would in a discrete application where the I/O and the processor gets changed at the same time. And so, we are seeing a significant increase in the transition of legacy, the migration of legacy, but once again not a process rich in... not a logics rich environment. And then the final aspect of process is that we are moving more into continuous of process. And by nature that is less a logic intensive control environment than discrete or batch hybrid and there is a lot of other equipment that goes there, in particular our motor control, and also in the continuous process that's a region where the customer expects the automation supplier to deliver the solution. And so that's why our MPS business is growing, our solutions business is growing so strong, because there is a lot more engineering content in those applications than there would be through a batch or a discrete application, which is also many times sold through our system integrator channel, which would then mean, we are supplying a very rich product mix and a much less engineering content rich. So that's one of the reasons, I should say, a couple of the reasons why our process growth is not driving the same acceleration in logics that we have seen historically as we have grown discrete and batch hybrid.