Within the automation industry, the phrases "open system" and "open architecture" typically refer to products or equipment that end users can modify, configure and install themselves when necessary. These products have largely replaced proprietary products that only the vendor's own engineers or specially trained system integrators could customize to a particular application. Today, open architecture products dominate the automation industry, making it much easier for end users and system integrators to assemble complete automation systems from several sources without the vendors' help. That certainly makes integration projects easier, but could open systems become so easy to implement that the end user won't need their integrators' help either?
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