In the process industry, downtime can quickly erode profitability at an alarming rate—-upwards of $100,000 an hour in some applications. These companies recognize that equipment maintenance is quickly evolving beyond simple preventive activities into a proactive strategy of asset optimiza¬tion. This means knowing and achieving the full potential of plant floor equipment and performing maintenance only when it is warranted and at a time that minimizes the impact on the overall oper¬ation. To achieve this, companies need to be able to gather and distribute data across the enterprise in real-time from all process systems.