“This is my eighth ICC, and this is by far the best.” I asked a customer this morning how he was enjoying this year’s edition of the annual Inductive Automation Ignition Community Conference.
I concur completely (although I’ve attended more than eight). The Harris Center in Folsom had long since proved to be too small to house the community’s growth. Executives agreed to move the venue to the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center in Sacramento. They planned for doubling the size from 800 to 1,600, but the organizers told me that doing this the first time encompassed so many unknowns that they couldn’t breathe easily until half-way through the first day. This one reminded me of the automation company user groups I once attended.
I’m writing this in the hallway. The energy from conversations certainly keeps my energy up.
Part of the attraction this year emanates from the ability to house more breakout sessions. New also this year are Walker Reynold’s Prove It! Sessions. I sat in one with HighByte where the task is to prove to the audience that their solution really works.
It helps when company executives have something good to say. And CEO Colby Clegg and CTO Carl Gould certainly rocked the conference with the huge advances in the latest Ignition Release—8.3.
The original vision I heard some 23 years ago focused on building an HMI/SCADA using IT-friendly technology from the ground up. Oh, and coming from a background as an integrator for another software company, the second focus concerned the pricing model designed to make the software more affordable and pricing more transparent.
Reading through just the bullet points I have below shows how far “IT-friendly” has come. The foundation for Ignition ties even more deeply into technologies familiar to all IT developers. With the hit of the show saved for previews of coming attractions when Colby and Carl announced coming in a few months—Model Context Protocol (MCP), thought of like an API for Agentic AI. MCP is so new and powerful that Inductive Automation may be beating IT developers to the game.
Inductive Automation Releases Ignition 8.3
Ignition 8.3 is such a comprehensive update that I’m surprised that it isn’t 9.0. Inductive says it provides tools for building solutions in SCADA, IIoT, MES, HMI, and more. It’s so much more that if I were an analyst paid $50,000 to do things like this, I’d give the category a new name.
This update (actually a significant technology foundation update) to Ignition 8.3 delivers major advancements in data processing efficiency, security, management, and development speed in order to elevate operational technology (OT) to modern IT standards and meet the speed and scalability needs of modern enterprises. These updates continue in the vision of the founder I first heard 22 years ago about developing OT software with the latest IT-friendly technology.
“Ignition has disrupted the industry and defined a new paradigm in industrial enterprise integration. With Version 8.3, we have completed our long-standing vision to create the world’s most powerful, most open, and most flexible application development platform,” says Colby Clegg, CEO of Inductive Automation and co-creator of Ignition.
Key Ignition 8.3 features include:
- The new Industrial Historian Solution Suite, which includes the Historian Core Module, the SQL Historian Module, and a new Historian API for custom historian implementations.
- The new Event Streams Module, which enables mapping and directing of event-driven data by creating a communication pipeline between various sources (such as tag changes or Kafka topics) and handlers (like scripts or database tables).
- Perspective Module improvements, including a new Drawing Editor with native vector illustration tools, a form generator, and an offline mode for data entry and storage.
- The redesigned Ignition Gateway, featuring a faster, more powerful web interface, integrated search capabilities, enhanced customization and visual organization, and consolidated configuration and diagnostic tools.
- Next-level security that aligns with modern IT standards, including a new Secrets Management system, and Google Protobuf for faster, more secure communication between clients and gateways.
- Long-Term Support (LTS), receiving regular updates and enhancements through the next five years.
- Ignition 8.3 also features enhanced store-and-forward capabilities, improved enterprise deployment management, built-in REST API, new Gateway deployment mode, version control and collaboration with Git, simplified containerization, and much more.
- Ignition Solution Suites, which include collections of Ignition modules and optional support plans that provide Upgrade Protection. Ignition Solution Suites simplify the Ignition purchasing process so that users can buy and deploy the precise solution they need more quickly. Five Solution Suites are currently available, and they align Ignition’s capabilities with common industrial use cases: The Application Building Suite, The Industrial Historian Suite, The DataOps Operations Suite, The Alarm Management Suite, and The Enterprise Integration Suite.
2025 Ignition Firebrand Awards & Discover Gallery Awards
Every year the company recognizes significant and unique applications developed with Ignition. This year the company also recognized outstanding efforts in educating students about industrial automation with the Educational Engagement Firebrand Award, and honored contributions to the Ignition user community with the Community Impact Firebrand Award.
2025 Ignition Firebrand Award Winners:
- Concera (End user: Sibanye-Stillwater)
- Insight Engineering (End user: Haymes Paint)
- SAGE Group (End user: Sydney Airport Corporation)
- ASE Global
- National Renewable Energy Lab
2025 Community Impact Firebrand Award Winner: Nick Minchin, Senior System Engineer at SAGE Automation, who dedicated much time to answering questions and helping people on the Ignition Forums.
2025 Educational Engagement Firebrand Award Winner: HebronSoft / Hebron IT Academy. These students from the Ukraine developed a process of custom fabricating prosthetic hands for soldiers who lost limbs in the war.
2025 Discover Gallery Award Winners:
- CanDoIt Solutions (End user: Vide Ultra)
- CSE Icon, Inc. (End user: Ovintiv)
- Whiskey House of Kentucky
- TIGA (End user: EXCO Resources)
- ECON Tech (End user: Gerdau Corsa)
- Avadine (End user: Wheeler Ridge-Maricopa Water Storage District)
- Actemium Toronto (End user: Trioworld North America)
- 2Gi Technologie (End user: Veolia)
- SAFEgroup Automation (End user: Department of Environment and Water [DEW])
- Lucid Motors
- AT-Automation (End user: BMT Aerospace)
