Ethernet's combination of low cost, widespread availability and market familiarity has been attractive to industrial automation applications, but recently the technology has advanced to the point where it addresses the requirements of automation customers. This is particularly true in areas such as ruggedness and suitability for plant-floor operation, but the ability to provide deterministic operation through intelligently implemented network architectures is a primary catalyst behind ethernet's emergence on the factory floor. Ethernet holds a significant potential to deliver bottom-line savings in industrial automation. While the ability to leverage the commercial sales volume and supply availability in the commercial market is favourable to some, the use of this common platform to enable even further capabilities such as remote monitoring and diagnosis, Global Data Availability (GDA) and ultimately a truly distributed automation environment is where the true value proposition of the future lies.