500th PROFINET Certificate Awarded to GE

VersaMAX PROFINET IO scanner supports redundant power supplies to increase application run time

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA 23. November 2011 – GE Intelligent Platforms announced that the company was awarded with the 500^th PROFINET certificate by PI (PROFIBUS & PROFINET International) at a press conference at the SPS/IPC/Drives exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany today. The certified product is the VersaMAX PROFINET IO scanner.

Marcel van Helten, General Manager of GE Intelligent Platforms Germany and CCS Product Manager says: “Due to the collaboration with PI (PROFIBUS & PROFINET International) we can increase our flexibility, configurationally options and application availability and meet our commitment to open standards.”

Joerg Freitag, Chairman of PI (PROFIBUS & PROFINET International) points out: ”The certification is mandatory for PROFINET devices in terms of quality assurance. Due to this high quality standard, application users can trust a solid certified portfolio of devices for reliable interoperability. For some time now we have experienced an enormous rise in certification testing for PROFINET products. We are delighted about the global commitment of GE Intelligent Platforms in the PROFINET environment.”

PROFINET is now available on the high performance PACSystems controllers and the VersaMAX I/O range of products. 

Utilizing PROFINET combined with PACSystems, GE is providing all of the benefits of an Ethernet system without the complexity. The newly designed PROFINET VersaMAX I/O node has a redundant power supply option to support the high availability architecture.

Name-based configuration enables solutions in just minutes.  Built-in switches with a choice of copper or fiber cable types for direct connection means that no extra hardware is needed for connectivity, allowing long distances between I/O nodes and increased reliability. The adoption of MRP (media redundancy protocol) in a ring topology allows customers to take nodes offline for maintenance without ever shutting down the application. In the event of a wire cut, the system redirects traffic in as low as one millisecond without disrupting the I/O. 

“PACSystems is known for its outstanding high availability offering and the PROFINET extensions add significantly to that capability,” said Van Helten.

For more information: www.ge-ip.com/profinet

A high resolution image to illustrate this release can be found at:
www.genewscenter.com/ImageLibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetailsID=4210

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Media Contact:

Elli Holman
GE Intelligent Platforms
+1 508 698 7456
 elli.holman@ge.com