Russ L. Agrusa Founder and CEO ICONICS

Russ is the Founder and CEO of ICONICS, a world leading software developer of OPC Enabled HMI / SCADA and other WEB enabled multimedia software applications for factory automation and manufacturing based on OPC standards. Russ has over 25 years of experience in managing software development of HMI / SCADA and control products for the Process Control and Data Acquisition industry.

ICONICS recognized that OPC was core to the future of Plug and Play software components and produced the first commercially available "OPC-to-the Core" based HMI/SCADA products. Our GENESIS32 suite of HMI/SCADA products were designed from the ground up to take maximum advantage of OPC's natural goodness. ICONICS has done an enormous amount of volunteer work for the OPC Foundation, serving on the Data Access, Alarm / Events and HDA committees.

ICONICS has created several advanced OPC toolkits supporting Data Access as well as the OPC Alarm and Events specifications to further promote the worldwide spread and use of the OPC standard. ICONICS has been involved with the OPC efforts since the very beginning of OPC, when it was called WINSEM. ICONICS has been a very early advocate of OPC's impact on the automation industry and has done some of the first OPC seminars to promote OPC's use in industry. ICONICS helped define the OPC Alarm & Events Specification and produced the OPC Alarm / Events Sample Code which was donated and is used by the OPC Foundation. ICONICS is currently on the OPC XML committee and is helping define the OPC XML standard for WEB enabled applications.

Russ started his career at Westinghouse Electric Corporation designing software systems for Fossil and Nuclear Power Plant control systems. He was instrumental in the development of Westinghouse Electric's first Distributed Control System called the WDPF in the early 80's. He then worked at Foxboro Company leading the HMI development of the "IA" Distributed Control System. Russ started ICONICS in 1986 to take advantage of the emerging PC based automation market and to create off-the-shelf HMI and SCADA software for factory automation.

Russ has a BS in Electrical Engineering from SUNY at New York at Buffalo and an MS in Computer Science from Boston University.