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HISTORY

The Citect Story.

Citect has been around as a product since 1987. A Sydney company, Control Instrumentation produced it. They did a lot of work with coal washing plants and developed their own HMI to use. They subsequently gave it a name and packaged it as a product for resale. The HMI market at that time was largely controlled by the big industry players and mainly consisted of DCS (Distributed Control Systems). These systems from Honeywell, Bailey and Foxboro were complex, expensive and had minimal graphics. The operator screens largely replicated standard instrument "FacePlates". There were some small players using PC's, but due to the PC hardware lacking real processing power these had severe performance issues. Control Instrumentation found the solution to this limitation. The development was largely driven by Colin Yamey and Glen Duffy.
Colin headed up the engineering and Glen the marketing. Together they could put on one of the best "Dog & Pony Shows" around. They believed in the product and were totally convincing.
One of the major differentiators between Citect and their competitors was the way the system was sold. It was a complete package. There were no extras. Graphics, alarms, trends, reports and communication drivers were all included. The competitors mainly charged for "Modules" which allowed for a lower base price, but once the required "Modules" were added, the cost rapidly escalated. The underlying system archichtecture with the dBase files is virtually unchanged today. The scalability from a small system with fifty points to an enterprise system with tens of thousands of points and multiple networked servers continues to work seamlesly today. The ability to upgrade to later versions and expand the system, without re-writes, has always been a major feature.
Control Instrumentation were part of Alfa Laval. A management buyout moved the company to a stand alone entity "CiTechnologies Group Limited". During the tech boom the company went public in 1997. They rode the tech boom, but also the bust. There was another name change to "Citect Corporation Limited" in 2002. The company was acquired by Schneider in 2006.

This is a work in progress and will be expanded, time permitting.