3rd Party Partners and Empower Instrument Drivers
Waters appreciates your business. We understand your need for choices that provide appropriate business solutions. To that end, Waters partners collaboratively with a variety of chromatographic instrument vendors to provide a robust approach for multi-vendor instrument control in Empower in order to provide a wide array of choices to enable business flexibility and productivity.
The following vendors have a partnership with Waters and through this relationship, the vendors develop Empower instrument drivers:
- Bruker (GC drivers)
- CTC (PAL Autosampler drivers)
- DANI Instruments (GC and headspace drivers)
- Hitachi (LC drivers)
- Metrohm (IC drivers)
- Perkin Elmer (GC and headspace drivers)
- ProteinSimple (iCE drivers)
- Shimadzu (LC and GC drivers)
- ThermoScientific | Dionex (LC, GC, IC drivers)
- *Agilent (LC, GC drivers, developed using alternate approach)
With the exception of the Agilent instrument drivers, these drivers are developed utilizing a Waters-created standard approach called Open Interface Portal (OIP). Waters provides our instrument driver partners with the knowledge and information required to develop the drivers. Waters provides guidance and support for the OIP approach; it is the instrument partner that is responsible for the driver development and the timing and choice of driver functionality that is implemented. As such, Waters supports the Empower software, the partner supports the instrument hardware, and Waters and the partner work together to provide driver customer support. In this case, the vendor designated as the first point of contact varies. Waters acknowledges that it is not always straightforward for customers to know whether questions and concerns relate to the instrument driver or Empower. To that end, Waters happily accepts support calls where the diagnosis of which product is affected is needed. In situations where it is unclear whether an issue is related to the instrument driver or to Empower, Waters and the partner work collaboratively to troubleshoot, diagnose, and bring the issue to resolution.
*Agilent
Agilent is also a partner of Waters, however the development of Empower instrument drivers for Agilent chromatographic instruments is different and uses an approach called Instrument Control Framework (ICF). In this approach, Agilent develops the instrument drivers and supporting architecture, and Waters develops an Instrument Control Framework Support Layer (ICF SL) which acts as a connector between Empower and the Agilent product. Waters provides support for Agilent instrument drivers on Empower as well as for Empower. Agilent supports the instrument hardware. Waters works closely with Agilent on support issues when necessary in order to provide the highest possible customer service.
The following matrix provides information on the latest 3rd party instrument drivers, where to obtain them and where to obtain support.
3rd party instrument drivers matrix
