I brought two questions along to my visit to Folsom, California and the 11th Ignition Community Conference. How are people using HMI/SCADA software? Why, after all these years, do companies still need to pursue “digital transformation”?
I’ll have a few posts from the event. Plenty of news. And time to write since I wasn’t invited to the user group meeting in Anaheim starting today.
CEO Colby Clegg and CTO Carl Gould made several announcements about enhancements and changes to the existing Ignition 8.1 including expansion of the Ignition Cloud product and simplifying pricing and SKUs for the Ignition Edge product drawing cheers from its user and integrator audience.
Ignition Cloud Edition Multi-Tenant Licensing
Earlier this year, Inductive Automation released Ignition Cloud Edition, which is a fully hosted enterprise solution deployed on the AWS and Azure cloud platforms. Today, the company announced it will remove the Ignition Cloud Edition license clause that prohibits multi-tenancy.
This change, which is planned to take effect during Q4 2023, will allow customers to use Ignition Cloud Edition to build reusable, commercially viable multi-tenant applications.
“For years, many customers have been interested in building commercial hosted applications on top of the Ignition platform. The flexibility and accessibility of the cloud makes it the most natural place to build these types of applications. Multi-tenancy provides a new economic model for developing exciting and scalable web applications in Ignition,” says Inductive Automation CEO Colby Clegg.
Ignition Edge Product Line Simplification
Inductive Automation announced that it is streamlining its Ignition Edge product offerings while expanding the products’ capabilities with unlimited data. In Q4 2023, the number of Ignition Edge products will be reduced from five to two, which are Ignition Edge IIoT and Ignition Edge Panel. Both Ignition Edge IIoT and Ignition Edge Panel will have no limits on tags or device connections, and both will include MQTT Transmission capabilities.
“Ignition Edge products provide the simplest, most cost-effective way to capture, process, and visualize critical data at the edge of the network. Ignition Edge has been a huge success and, for many of our customers, it has provided the missing piece to make IIoT a reality. Now we’re making Ignition Edge even better by removing limitations and making it easier for customers to choose the right Ignition Edge product for their needs,” says Inductive Automation Chief Technology Officer Carl Gould.
Two additional announcements of import
Inductive Automation Australia
For the first time, Inductive Automation will open an office outside of the United States. Inductive Automation has acquired the assets of its Australian distributor iControls and is opening Inductive Automation Australia PTY as a wholly owned subsidiary of Inductive Automation, LLC.
Brisbane-based iControls will ramp down its operations shortly, and most of its assets, operations, and staff will transfer over to Inductive Automation Australia, which will also hire additional staff in the region.
“The creation of Inductive Automation Australia is a major step toward our goal of providing direct support for Ignition around the world on a 24/7 basis. The team at iControls possesses a wealth of Ignition experience and we’re excited to bring them onto the official Inductive Automation team. Furthermore, Australia is an English-speaking country with a strong technology background, and operating there will position us to expand into key markets in the Eurasian region,” says Inductive Automation CEO Colby Clegg.
Read more about Inductive Automation Australia in this blog post.
Inductive Automation also continues to work with independent international distributors in Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and UAE; Brazil; Central America; France; Italy; Norway and Sweden; Sub-Saharan Africa; and Switzerland.
Ignition Community Impact Program
Inductive Automation announced the launch of the new Ignition Community Impact Program, which provides a standardized process for individuals and organizations to apply for a free Ignition license to create a project that benefits their community. The program is intended to support philanthropic and community-service projects such as the Room in The Inn homeless management information system that won an Ignition Community Firebrand Award this year.
Program applications are filed through IA’s website, and licenses are granted after the application is approved. Those interested can learn more and apply.
The Ignition Effect’ Video Series
Inductive Automation announced the release of “The Ignition Effect,” a new video series highlighting the many positive long-term effects that Ignition has on the professionals who use it. The goal of the series is to help viewers more fully understand the role of Ignition in the industry by telling the types of personal stories that are not usually featured in case studies. The series includes interviews with system integrators and end users from the US, South America, the UK, and Europe, and highlights topics such as community, education, career journeys, and more.
The first 5 episodes are available now and more episodes will be released in the future.
