Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) and Scion Instruments today announced a gas chromatography instrument control agreement. This exchange agreement provides customers the freedom to operate instruments from both manufacturers in each company’s chromatography data systems.

The companies will exchange development documentation and royalty-free licenses of driver software for the integration of each other’s GC instruments into their respective chromatography data systems. With the development of these drivers, GC systems from either manufacturer will be integrated into Agilent’s OpenLAB CDS EZChrom Edition and Scion’s CompassCDS chromatography data systems.

With Agilent’s Instrument Control Framework and Rapid Control driver technology, Scion’s 3000- and 400-series gas chromatographs—including the latest SCION 436 and 456 models—can be used with Agilent’s OpenLAB CDS software. Likewise, Scion’s CompassCDS will support Agilent’s 6890 and 7890 Series gas chromatographs.

“Agilent pursues an open-systems approach to laboratory informatics, preserving our customers’ investment in instrumentation, workflows, operating procedures, data and knowledge,” said John Sadler, Agilent vice president and general manager of software and informatics. “We are continuously expanding OpenLAB CDS multivendor instrument control capabilities in collaboration with other analytical instrument manufacturers and are working to standardize analytical instrument control across data systems, resulting in the best-working and best-tested software for our mutual customers.”

“Scion is dedicated to providing the best solutions for individual customer needs, including multi-vendor support in our chromatography data systems,” said Dan Klopp, CEO of Scion Instruments. “With this agreement, we continue a rich legacy of customer focused improvements to our software and systems.”

For more information about Scion’s CompassCDS software, visit www.scioninstruments.com.

For more information about Agilent’s OpenLAB CDS software, visit Agilent’s software and informatics website.

About Scion Instruments

Scion Instruments designs, manufactures and sells gas chromatography systems, peripherals and supplies, along with chromatography data systems. Scion Instruments provides GC and GCMS solutions for use in chemical analysis markets worldwide. More information about Scion Instruments is available at www.scioninstruments.com.

About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A), a global leader in life sciences, diagnostics and applied chemical markets, is the premier laboratory partner for a better world. Agilent works with customers in more than 100 countries, providing instruments, software, services and consumables for the entire laboratory workflow. Agilent generated revenues of $4.0 billion in fiscal 2014. The company employs about 12,000 people worldwide. Information about Agilent is available at www.agilent.com.

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