A wave of new technologies is driving major disruption in the manufacturing sector. Big Data and analytics, the cloud, the Industrial Internet of Things, mobile technologies and social technologies are changing our world and will affect how the successful manufacturers of tomorrow operate. There’s also another type of change taking place and software technology that is enabling the next step in the evolution of SCADA.

Many automation professionals are experiencing a new level of capabilities and freedom, and even enjoying their work like never before. They’re able to think about all of the things they can do with their systems instead of all of the things they can’t. This has a major impact because when people enjoy their work, real innovation happens on the ground floor and businesses succeed.

Held back by older technology

For years now, many SCADA users have felt limited by the technology. They’ve come to perceive it as an obstacle to work around rather than a flexible tool they can shape to their needs. The underlying problem is that what most people today think of as current SCADA technology is actually based on decades-old technology.

Despite its many uses, old SCADA technology holds its users back from operating at their full potential or innovating for the future. Although enterprises need modern, flexible solutions to sharpen their competitive edge, the SCADA industry continues to sell cumbersome and expensive software packages.

The lack of technological progress in SCADA frustrating; it threatens the competitive viability of SCADA-using enterprises going forward. A company that needs to improve its processes will be hampered by the lack of real-time data analytics. Or, it may be forced to endure an expensive and time-consuming upgrade of its SCADA system because the operating system it ran on was phased out. It might need to develop some new displays but find that task next-to-impossible to do in their current SCADA software. Or, a company might need to add more workers onto its SCADA system but be unable to afford the increased costs that would result. These are just some of the ways that old SCADA proves to be a hassle and a hindrance to enterprises trying to succeed in the 21st century.

In a new IoT driven world, the goai is to make real-time information easily available within the enterprise.

Experience the new SCADA

Don’t frustrated SCADA end users and integrators deserve a better user experience? Indeed, they require it in order to succeed. It’s become clear that late-20th-century SCADA software will no longer suffice. For a new user experience, today’s enterprises need a new SCADA solution that’s made for the 21st century.

What’s needed is more than an update to SCADA software, but an entirely new approach to the technological, licensing, business and ethical aspects of SCADA software. Essentially, the entire experience around SCADA software needs to be reinvented from the ground up. This new paradigm, or new SCADA, creates a user experience that not only eliminates old SCADA pain points but builds entirely new possibilities. The new SCADA is more than just an idea; many integrators and system engineers are experiencing it by using an effective new software platform.

7 key advantages of new SCADA

This article will examine the most compelling reasons why old SCADA holds companies back, and how updated SCADA technology solves those problems through modern technologies, increased flexibility, database compatibility, true real-time analytics, rapid installation and development, platform independence and unlimited licensing.

Modern technology

Old SCADA is outdated, doesn’t work well with databases, lacks real-time data analysis, is slow to set up, and has a pieced-together platform that is too limited for users’ needs. Many of the issues with old SCADA systems can be attributed to the fact that IT systems have continued to advance while SCADA’s progress largely stalled out.

While the 90s may not seem that long ago, technology has progressed enormously since then. During much of that decade, the Internet was still catching on among businesses and consumers. Dial-up modems, large cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) were still commonly seen then. Since that era, the web has taken on a central role in business and society, and web-connected smartphones and mobile devices are becoming more prevalent by the day. In our increasingly fast-changing world, how can decades-old technology be considered an acceptable option?

Today, we need SCADA software built with the Internet in mind. New technology can brings all of the speed, performance and connectivity of the web to the world of SCADA. Users can download and install it in a few minutes, without installing a driver–launch and make changes to clients instantly with one click.

New SCADA systems can be set up on a cloud network or a local network. You can launch it to any computers or devices with a web browser, such as smartphones and tablets, so you can connect to your system not just on the plant floor but practically anywhere. The mobility of these new systems gives users the ability to access live data from throughout the enterprise, anytime, anyplace. This leads to a much smoother user experience and a much more productive system.

Increased flexibility

To build something that can stand the test of time, you need to start with a sturdy infrastructure. But instead of being built from the ground up, older SCADA is often separate pieces of technology marketed as a single software package.

The nature of this older software shows in its performance. Unsurprisingly, the disparate pieces within old SCADA systems don’t work together seamlessly, and it’s hard to rely on the system as a whole. Trying to upgrade these systems means adding newer technology on top of 90s technology.

Users today need the confidence that they can expand or scale back their system quickly. But old SCADA systems are not easily expandable: the more you try to customize or grow them, the more complicated they become. How are you supposed to know what you’ll need to add in the future or how will it affect the rest of the system? How much can you innovate when your SCADA setup is so unmanageable that you have to alter your unique processes to conform to it?

One of the most remarkable aspects of new SCADA technology is its unified modular architecture. A modular system is made up of components that can be added, changed or removed without impacting the rest of the system. New SCADA’s unified platform performs the most essential functions while allowing users to add specialized functions for human-machine interface (HMI), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), manufacturing execution systems (MES), and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) through a variety of modules which work together seamlessly.

By adding certain modules, users of new SCADA technology can add features such as charts and tables, mobile access, voice notifications for alarms, the ability to create sophisticated logic systems, and more. It also provides a rapid development environment for building any type of automated system you need. It’s not uncommon for users who become familiar with new capabilities to develop customized applications and systems that would be impossible with any other SCADA program. Companies can use it to tie all of their assets together, display various types of data, track production and work-in-progress, analyze raw materials, eliminate paperwork on the plant floor, track sales information and other CRM functions, and much more.

The modularity of new SCADA technology allows users to buy exactly what they need when they need it, and to feel the assurance that systems will continue to work smoothly as users add and make changes to it.

The evolution of SCADA technology is creating a new software platform applicable to a wide range of industries.

Database-friendly

In an increasingly data-driven world, there’s a lot of focus on managing larger datasets and getting more value out of them through analysis. Data needs to flow freely, but in many enterprises it doesn’t. One reason is that most SCADA software only communicates with a specific type of vendor-endorsed database. Communicating with a non-endorsed database requires paying additional charges and may require separate database connectors. Old SCADA software usually doesn’t work well with SQL databases, even though they are the most commonly used type of database. This can leave a gap between time-series and other useful enterprise data that’s typically stored in SQL databases. The result is that data stays locked down instead of flowing throughout the enterprise, a situation that limits efficiency and innovation.

As a database-centric SCADA software solution, Ignition software technology pioneered the connection of databases with SCADA. Instead of limiting communication to a specific type of database, it allows unlimited database connections with most any type of database, including SQL. By connecting with SQL databases, the technology platform allows users to put time-series data into a relational database, integrate SCADA with MES and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and log historical data from a SCADA system into a SQL database.

New SCADA technology can also support any database server and enables users to develop database applications. Users have the freedom to bridge different types of data and make all of it more useful. The database-centric nature of the solution makes the user feel much more empowered because they can gather all of their data into one place.

True real-time analytics

As the pace of business accelerates, getting data in real time becomes more important. Older SCADA software may display plant-floor data in real time, but getting a fleeting glance at this data isn’t the same as seeing it in context or gleaning insight from it. Without the ability to easily gather real-time and historical data from various sources, it is difficult to put your data into context. This makes it difficult to observe trends, see who did what and when, monitor performance, or improve output over a longer time period.

New SCADA solutions help users handle the ever-increasing volume, variety and velocity of data, which are also known as “the 3 V’s.” But just as importantly, it helps unlock the “4th V”: the value of data.

With new SCADA technology, it’s easy to obtain real-time and historical data from a variety of sources, put it all into context, and redistribute it. This helps enterprises to show more data seen to more people at more points throughout the process. When an operator gets plant-floor information in real time, they can take immediate action.

Real-time control and monitoring makes it possible to quickly see and analyze the status of a facility, and get instant alarm notifications and reports. Now that data is flowing freely between clients and servers instead of being isolated in different systems, key individuals can get a real-time overview of all their data, and the entire company can get more value from it. The new technology not only shows the data in real-time but offers practically unlimited ways to display and utilize that data.

Rapid installation and development

Everyone knows that outdated technology is slower, and you’re constantly reminded of this fact when working with older SCADA systems. When you go to install it, you can’t download it today. Instead, you usually have to wait for the disc to arrive in the mail. Once you have the software, it takes hours, days or weeks to install.

The time loss doesn’t stop there. When users need to add functionality or make configuration changes, they have to shut the system down and lose precious production time. Deploying applications to clients in old SCADA requires taking the clients offline. Designing with it takes up a lot of time, especially since older SCADA solutions don’t support concurrent development. Trying to develop new functionality is somewhere between very time-consuming and near-impossible. How can anyone keep up with the fast pace of business when their SCADA software is constantly slowing them down?

As mentioned earlier, old SCADA is still `90s-based, and technology that was considered fast enough then is now agonizingly slow. Newer SCADA technology speeds things up: instead of taking hours, days or even weeks to install, it can be downloaded and deployed in a matter of minutes. Instead of limiting the number of active simultaneous developers, its unlimited designer clients allow multiple developers to work on the same project concurrently. Users can add functionality or make configuration changes almost instantly with hot-pluggable modules, without shutting down the system. When upgradi ng the server, all clients update instantly. All of these time savings add up to an exponentially faster SCADA system.

Platform independence

Most SCADA software is made to run on a certain, proprietary operating system, usually one made by Microsoft. This puts users through the stress of Microsoft’s frequent security issues, patches and upgrades, and leaves them vulnerable whenever Microsoft terminates support for one of its operating systems. For example, when Microsoft ended support for Windows XP in April 2014, more than 15 percent of midsize and large enterprises were still using it at the time, according to estimates by Gartner Inc. Companies using Windows-based SCADA software were put into a no-win situation of expensively upgrading their OS or taking their chances with the security risks of an unsupported OS.

Newer SCADA technology is the first SCADA software built entirely on the Java programming language, which makes it cross-platform compatible and easily web-deployable. Cross-platform, Java-built Ignition spares its users from dealing with the OS upgrade cycle because it works with every modern version and service pack of Windows. The New SCADA can run on any major OS, including open-source, giving users many more options in the software and hardware they use. Ignition can also be connected to a wide range of devices and works seamlessly with any MES or ERP system, allowing data to flow through an entire organization. This makes it possible to connect the plant floor to the ERP level, so the whole enterprise can work smarter.

Unlimited licensing

In addition to its technological flaws, the licensing model of old SCADA is holding users back. Big SCADA software is built on a business model in which software is licensed by the number of tags, clients and connections that the customer uses. But while this model may benefit the software maker, it doesn’t work so well for the user, because the larger their system grows, the more money the user will have to spend.

In addition to being very expensive, SCADA licensing endangers the user’s success by hurting their ability to innovate. Think about it: when you have to pay for each piece you need to add to your system, you have less flexibility to grow, adapt and scale to keep up with today’s fast-paced business environment.

Old SCADA solutions prevent enterprises from becoming more data-driven by, in effect, limiting the number of people on the system or limiting the amount of data the system processes. This prevents users from reaping the maximum value from their system, and it stifles communication and collaboration.

New SCADA licensing corrects these problems by unlocking the user’s potential rather than limiting it for the sake of financial gain. Ignition is licensed by the number of servers and comes with unlimited free tags, unlimited clients and unlimited connections. This unlimited licensing model gives users the freedom to scale their SCADA systems without running into the barriers of expensive software licenses.

They can connect as many people as they want to the data they need. With unlimited clients, every member of the team can get operational insights without incurring additional cost. With unlimited tags, they can add as much data from as many sources as they need by paying one price per server license. They can build solutions that would’ve been too expensive with old SCADA software. Conventional SCADA licensing held manufacturers back, but The New SCADA sets them free with practically limitless options.

New SCADA technology

From wire-based telemetry to PC-based HMI software, the evolution of SCADA technology teaches us that those who want to succeed in this field must embrace and incorporate new technologies into their processes. The builders of The New SCADA understood this and set out to not merely improve SCADA software but to design a fundamentally different solution.

New SCADA software technology is the next step in the evolution of SCADA: a turning point where an aging technology was ushered into the Internet age and given new life. While the elements that comprise new SCADA are sophisticated, the guiding idea behind it is clear and simple: to build SCADA software for the 21st century.

As more enterprises adopt new SCADA software technologies, they are experiencing fewer obstacles, discovering better ways to run and grow their operations, and becoming part of a global movement that is permanently changing the course of industrial automation and control.

Technology report by Inductive Automation