December, 2009,

We have been very pleased to welcome our Collaborative Automation Partners during a 3 days event in Sophia-Antipolis, France, on December the 9th, 10th and 11th. The aim of this Forum was to enable our Collaborative Automation Partner Program (CAPP) companies to make informed decisions about adopting and integrating key technologies from Schneider Electric. Perhaps just as importantly, the goal of this event was to bring our partners to the table with Schneider CAPP Champions from 16 of the world’s most promising country markets for automation.

The first day was dedicated to a Market Place where 30 of our CAPP partner companies had the possibility to present their automation offers and solutions to a wide range of Schneider Electric representatives including technical and marketing Industry BU managers, Automation Solution Centers (ASC) experts and our CAPP champions. According to the more than 100 participants, this was a very valuable opportunity to know each other better and to have in depth discussions about our current relationship and possible future developments.

The second and third day featured a combination of Schneider Electric keynote presentations (including a video welcome from Michel Crochon, EVP Industry BU, a global Industry BU strategy overview from Cyril Perducat, SVP System Consistency and Innovation, and several presentations about the End-User strategy and roadmap as well as the OEM strategy and roadmap), and specific technical and commercial working groups including our CAPP partners, our CAPP champions and some Industry BU managers.

During the technical working groups, Schneider Electric Industry BU experts presented to our partners the latest technology update on our different platforms openness, including M340, OEM platform, CCS, FDT/DTM integration, and Ethernet IP strategy. This will help our partners to prepare future developments in line with our technological choices. The marketing / commercial working groups were the opportunity to address some key points such as the country market access (distribution, pricing, reseller agreements…), the measure of our common business, the communication (solution approach, One Web, country events), and the Installed Base. Many good ideas came up from those sessions and will be developed further to help deliver the best possible future for us both.

After sharing the working group outcomes, the awards session came to reward both our best CAPP partners and the best contribution of our CAPP champions. 3 categories were highlighted:

- the best technical application: Kestrel Coal Australia in Brisbane with our partner Niobrara R&D and our CAPP champion, Lyle Van der Veer

- the best commercial application: Torresol Energy in Spain with our partner Hirschmann and our CAPP champion, Josep Maria Peiro

- the best Partner of the Year: Prosoft Technologies has been elected 2009 Partner of the Year The picture below shows the participants at the end of the closing session where everybody was invited to join the 2010 CAPP Forum end of this year.