NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Agilent Technologies and Thermo Fisher Scientific today announced an agreement to exchange instrument controls.
Under the terms of the agreement, the firms will exchange instrument control driver documentation and software for liquid chromatographs, gas chromatographs, capillary electrophoresis, and ion chromatographs. They will also provide the necessary software-related technical assistance to allow "full and reliable control" of each other's instruments using the Thermo Fisher Chromeleon and Agilent OpenLab CDS software packages.
The agreement also defines terms for licensing and redistribution of instrument control software as well as formal escalation mechanisms used to manage technical support.
Financial details were not disclosed.
Officials from both firms said the deal would better help their mutual customers.
"Agilent continues to pursue its open systems strategy for laboratory informatics to maximize productivity for our customers and protect their investment in lab systems and the results they deliver," John Sadler, Agilent VP and general manager of software and informatics, said in a statement. "We are collaborating with all major and many smaller analytical instrument manufacturers to support Agilent instruments in their data systems, and to support their instruments in Agilent’s data systems."
Thermo Fisher President of Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry Dan Shine added that the firm was committed to providing "strong connectivity to all software and instruments."
Agilent also has exchanged instrument controls with Shimadzu and Advion.