by Gary Mintchell | Jan 9, 2018 | Data Management, Software
I don’t really think about report tools that much, to be honest. Maybe because most people seem to default to Microsoft Excel to draw information from their operations information system.
Roy Kok has been VP of sales and marketing for Ocean Data Systems / Dream Report for some time now. He’s an industry veteran whom I’ve known for probably 20 years. We’ve had occasion to chat about his product several times over the past few months. So, I had to ask, just what do you do and what kind of market is there—really?
[Note: He’s a new sponsor of the site, trying us out for a while. I don’t actively go out and sell ads, but I certainly appreciate the companies that do—hint. I actually probed about the market before he decided to buy.]
I guess I never thought about a custom report writer in the same genre as dashboards and other visibility tools. I stand corrected.
Kok tells me, “I believe Dream Report to be the number one product of this type in the world. We are currently shipping in the thousands per year. As you can imagine, this is giving us great market penetration and visibility, but Dream Report is not a very expensive product, so our company is still relatively small at 18 employees. Dream Report is all that we do, so from that perspective, we are a significant scale for a single product company. I believe we hold 5% or so market share. 85% market share is held by business products being applied to industrial applications. These products include Crystal Reports, Microsoft SSRS and Excel. That would leave 10% for the plethora of other tools, vertical market solutions, and smaller competitors.”
Why did this market become so dominated by business tools? “One simple word – History,” added Kok. “In the late 80s and early 90s, HMI/SCADA was still in its infancy and competition was tremendous. Vendor focus was on reliability and capability of HMI/SCADA. There was another invention at that same time – ODBC – in the business world. ODBC was the way third party products could interact with databases of all types. Also in the late 80s, Crystal Reports came on the market and in the early 90s, Microsoft delivered SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services). Excel was also available and leveraged ODBC. The result of all these developments was that HMI/SCADA vendors chose to enhance their products with ODBC and could thus leverage the variety of business tools on the market. That set the path for most of the industrial market. To be fair, some HMI/SCADA vendors dabbled in report generation, typically focused on connectivity too their own products.”
This becomes part of the IT / OT situation. Part of the continual divide between the organizations lies in the tools each use. Both thrive on information, but the type of information and its format is different between the two areas. Often business tools are much more expensive, since the cost can be spread over a much larger application framework. Kok posits that OT people have been hesitant to look at report applications from fear of cost and complexity. Therefore, the benefit of his product.
Adds Kok, “Our challenge is to re-educate the world that reports are easy to create and are actually your shortest path to continuous improvement. A report (or dashboard) can be fast and easy to create. It can then be scheduled for automatic generation and delivery. We argue that the step after installing a historian, should be the installation of a report and dashboard solution like Dream Report. Then, when KPIs go askew, you can use Dream Report analytics or other advanced tools to better understand the root cause. Dream Report can actually bridge the gap and help to justify advanced analytics like those from Seeq, Falkonry, TrendMiner, Tableau, Pentaho, and others.
And that, I think, is the next step forward—how to integrate advanced analytics into OT in a sensible and useful way. We keep talking about predictive maintenance. And have been for many years. Maybe that one really begins hitting. And we’ll watch for which application strikes next.
Ocean Data Systems has been growing organically since 2006. Major OEMs private labelling and reselling Dream Report include Schneider Electric, Wonderware, GE, Eurotherm, Indusoft.) Here is a short video.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 16, 2017 | Internet of Things, Podcast
I have recorded another in my series of occasional podcasts. This one begins with the Ignition Community Conference at Inductive Automation in Folsom, California last month.
What is SCADA? What is the Internet of Things. I keep puzzling out these things and the technologies that underlie them.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 26, 2017 | Automation, Security
Inductive Automation included a number of partner companies in its Ignition Community Conference last week in Folsom, CA. Among these companies was Bedrock Automation. I’ve written about Bedrock before a few times. This trip I was looking at its display when its CEO in disguise appeared.
Why it matters: Cyber security is at the top of everyone’s mind these days. Bedrock Automation has designed a system to be secure from all parts of the supply chain.
Albert Rooyakkers, founder/CEO/CTO, was wearing a hat and sunglasses and I walked right past him. However, he came over and gave me his usual high energy explanation of the entire Bedrock system.
Bedrock Automation builds an industrial control system (PLC) that was designed from the beginning with security in mind. Not just cyber security, but also security from tampering, lightning, high-energy electromagnetic interference, and more.
Intrinsic Security begins with Strong Cryptography, then adds Secure Components, Component Anti Tamper, Secure Firmware, Secure Communications, and Module Anti Tamper.
The metal construction showcases the secure construction, just as does the design of the I/O modules and communication with the controller (no insecure backplane).
Public Key Infrastructure
Rooyakkers always gives me the deep dive into Public Key Infrastructure which leads to Hardware Root of Trust—the essential element of security in the product.
Use of asymmetric cryptography for authentication and key exchange is the basis of secure e-commerce. In the internet context, there is a critical additional piece, a root of trust at the center of an exchange. This is called Certificate Authority. Key pairs, certificates, a root of trust and interoperable algorithms together form a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) which includes the infrastructure and policies to manage and maintain the trust. Some of the building blocks include:
• Signatures
• Transport Layer Security
• X.509 Certificates
• Certificate Chain of Trust
• Root Certificate Authority
Until now PKI has not been implemented in industrial control systems. Bedrock Automation embeds the Hardware Root of Trust in the control system. It is designed from the ground up with security in mind.
Bedrock Automation has always gone to market with systems integrators—a strategy that fits with Inductive Automation. In many remote control and SCADA systems, the two form a perfect pair.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 20, 2017 | Operations Management, Software
Forgoing a couple of vacation days, I headed out to Folsom (Sacramento), California this week to attend the gathering of SCADA geeks known as the Inductive Automation Ignition Community Conference.
This was the fifth conference for the company and my third. This is the second straight sell out. The venue was packed, energy level high, networking intense.
I remember meeting Founder/Owner/CEO Steve Hechtman about 14 years ago at a trade show. He explained a new way to build SCADA and a new business model that would upset the current dominant competitors. He emphasized building from the ground up with IT friendly technology.
He did it. From a small building in Sacramento to 22,000 square feet of rented office space (where they positioned people near aisles to make the space look more packed only five years ago) to a building down the street that they’ve gutted and rebuilt to give their 56,000 square feet. Looks like they’re doing well.
Emphasis of all the keynote speakers was on Ignition (Inductive Automation’s product) as a platform.
Don Pearson, chief strategy officer, talked digital disruption. He cited a survey that reported 84% of business leaders expect disruption, yet only 7% have a strategy, “sitting on the fence is not an option.”
Inductive is a proponent of Open Process Automation Forum making this the second straight conference I’ve attended with OPAF as a sub theme.
- Pearson cited these Success factors for the company:
- Decouple devices from applications—use a publish/subscribe approach
- Superior OT solution, meet operations requirements first
- Single source of truth—make devices the source of tags
- Plug and Play functionality
- Eliminate cutovers (taking software down and booting up new and hoping)
- Scale with unlimited licensing
Ignition is “perfectly poised for IIoT.”
Two questions I had:
It’s still just SCADA, but what is it really these days. What is it that makes it still exciting. After talking with many people, I figured out these things:
- Extend to enterprise
- Exponentially larger
- Mobile
- Visualization smoothly from device to device
Hearing once again about OPAF, I wondered:
Will it just be another OMAC?
On the other hand, some innovative small companies are moving in who just might change the direction of industry.
Big push on community. Don, “The community is our North Star.”
This is the only company in this technology area currently exhibiting growth, enthusiasm, and new technologies. Do competitors write off SCADA as an old market? Well, in this era of the Internet of Things, that will be a mistake–much to the benefit of Inductive Automation.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 7, 2017 | Automation, Industrial Computers, Software
One under-the-radar trend in industrial automation and software is the development of a marketplace. Several companies have one type of marketplace or another. I think it’s going to prove to be a powerful concept. Here is a take on it from Advantech.
Advantech, a leader of the global industrial computing market, launches the WISE-PaaS Marketplace, an online software shopping website that features exclusive software services provided by Advantech and its partners. The WISE-PaaS Marketplace provides diverse WISE-PaaS IoT application software, including WebAccess/SCADA, WebAccess/HMI, WebAccess/IVS, WebAccess/IMM, WebAccess/NMS, online IoT cloud services, and IoT security services. The WISE-PaaS Marketplace is a sharing platform to integrate with IoT solutions developed by solution partners to provide the building blocks for customers to upgrade existing business systems to Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0 quickly and easily.
Share Success, Grow Business, and Innovate Services
The Wise-PaaS Marketplace is aimed at diverse solution offerings that provide cloud infrastructure services, security services, integrated WISE-PaaS IoT software services, and domain-focused applications for simple and rapid deployment. The WISE-PaaS Marketplace is a value-sharing platform/ecosystem that enables customers to market unique IoT applications and services, increase business opportunities and growth, and maximize returns under the profit-sharing system.
Ongoing Innovation for Future IoT Trends
Customers can subscribe software services via Wise-PaaS Marketplace with WISE-points included in the WISE-PaaS VIP membership packages to access numerous IoT solutions and create IoT innovations for future IoT trends.
