I recorded this as I was leaving Inductive Automation’s Ignition Community Conference 2025 in Sacramento. The event team performed wonderfully moving ICC from the smaller Harris Center in Folsom to the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center in Sacramento with double the attendance. Lots of energy, many partners. The event had to be credited a success. Of course, the highlight was introduction of Ignition 8.3. This update included many long-sought additions. Note: Inductive Automation has been a long-term sponsor for my work. However, we do not have an “influencer” relationship, that is, they do not pay me for writing content. They just appreciate my work. If this information is useful, please pass along.
“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.
Colby Clegg and Carl Gould ICC 2025
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.
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.
I have written about alternative technologies several times over the past 20 years. I’ve speculated about the power of Raspberry Pi for various control projects. Open source and standards-based programming tools. Some projects have become public using alternatives to big-name tools.
Can a company switch to different technologies?
David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of 37 Signals, explained a major change at the company moving from Apple-technology-based software development to a Linux-based one.
37 Signals developed the popular collaborative work tool Basecamp. Also the email client I use, HEY. Heinemeier Hansson co-wrote with partner Jason Fried the books Remote: Office Not Required, It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work, and Rework.
When the company released HEY, Apple gave them a lot of App Store grief. 37 Signals had been an almost exclusive Apple shop. The fallout from the hassle Apple gave them caused Heinemeier Hansson disenchantment with Apple. He immediately switched from iPhone to Android. Found out he didn’t lose anything in the transition. Then he explored Linux on the desktop. He didn’t think that would ever work, but he found a way around.
I should mention that he is a major force behind the programming language and IDE Ruby on Rails. He began this journey with Ubundu and Omakub on a less complex computer than the Mac. He then worked on his own open source Linux distribution called Omarchy with Hybrland windowing built on the Arch Linux distribution.
This worked so well for his own development work that he is transitioning all the company’s software development work to that platform.
Agentic AI has been in the news recently. I had interviewed HighByte Chief Product Officer John Harrington about it in the spring. Here is the company’s announcement about its new Intelligence Hub version 4.2 bring it to life.
Industrial software company announces general availability of HighByte Intelligence Hub version 4.2, enabling Agentic and AI-assisted DataOps at the edge
HighByte announced the release of HighByte Intelligence Hub version 4.2 with an embedded Industrial Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server that powers Agentic AI and new LLM-assisted data contextualization via native connections to Amazon Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Google Gemini, OpenAI, and local LLMs.
HighByte Intelligence Hub provides the first Industrial MCP Server to expose data pipelines as “tools” to AI agents, including descriptions and parameters. With the Intelligence Hub, AI agents can securely access all connected industrial systems and make real time or historical data requests on them.
The latest release also introduces Git integration and OpenTelemetry (OTel) support to scale and manage deployments using DevOps tooling for version control and observability. Users will also have access to new Databricks and TimescaleDB connectors and enhanced connectivity with Apache Kafka and Amazon S3 for cloud-to-edge use cases. Furthermore, the Oracle Database connection has been enhanced to support Change Data Capture (CDC), the Snowflake SQL connection now supports write operations, and the AVEVA PI System connection supports enhanced PI point metadata reads. These capabilities optimize bi-directional connectivity for the many disparate data services found in the cloud, data center, and factory floor.
Tired of the hype and speculation surrounding the term Artificial General Intelligence? How about something that could be a useful tool for engineers? This release breeds questions as well as answers. How do you think you could use it?
Foundation EGI platform: Demonstrating AI- & physics-driven disassembly of Engineering files
With AI purpose-built for engineering, Foundation EGI is empowering teams to design faster, solve harder problems, and rethink what’s possible.
Foundation EGI, creator of the world’s first Engineering General Intelligence (EGI) platform, announced $23M in oversubscribed Series A funding, raising over $30M total. The company is accelerating its vision of turning manufacturing’s biggest bottlenecks into breakthroughs using domain-specific AI.
The latest round was led by Translink Capital with participation from RRE Ventures, McRock Capital, Escape Investment Management (Jim Scapa), Fifth Growth Fund, and returning backers including E14 Fund, UNION, GRIDS Capital, and Henry Ford III.
“We’re not just using AI to automate tasks. We’re building AI that knows when to break the rules,” said Wojciech Matusik, Ph.D., Co-founder & CSO of Foundation EGI and Professor of EECS and MechE at MIT. “The biggest leaps in engineering haven’t come from following best practices. They came from challenging assumptions. Foundation EGI is designed to do exactly that.”
EGI combines purpose-built large language models with physics-based context and engineering best practices to tackle the complex nature of engineering, from design to manufacturing to documentation. It transforms disorganized specifications, siloed tribal knowledge, and outdated instructions into succinct, structured, auditable, and human-/machine-executable workflows.
“The next industrial revolution will be AI-native,” said Mok Oh, Ph.D., Co-founder and CEO of Foundation EGI. “It begins by empowering engineers with AI tools that speak their language. From there, we move toward a future where humans and machines co-design with shared context and creativity.”
Foundation EGI was born from MIT’s cross-disciplinary research in AI for design and manufacturing, led by co-founders Matusik and Michael Foshey. Their seminal paper, Large Language Models for Design and Manufacturing, was published in 2024 and has influenced a new wave of intelligent engineering tools. Foundation EGI was founded to commercialize and power real-world AI applications for all manufacturing domains, including automotive, heavy industry, appliances, power tools, advanced manufacturing, and much more.
“We are thrilled to invest in Foundation EGI to support their next phase of growth,” said Toshi Otani, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Translink Capital, who led the Series A. “We backed Foundation EGI because this is one of the rare teams that combines deep technical mastery in AI with firsthand knowledge of how design and manufacturing actually work. In addition, we believe that there is a great market opportunity that exists in Japan, Korea and Taiwan where we have a strong track record of supporting our portfolio companies.”
“The best founders don’t just see around corners. They reshape the cornerstones of entire industries,” said Vic Singh, General Partner at RRE Ventures. “When we met Mok, Wojciech and Mike we were immediately impressed with their market depth and technical acumen. Foundation EGI is building core infrastructure for the next generation of industrial AI — transforming manual processes that traditionally cost millions of dollars and countless hours of skilled labor into Engineering Intelligence — upending the space while giving engineers leverage to focus on the higher order work.
This is part two of my reports from the Hexagon Live Global Event. I had been to one previous event for only a day. Hexagon is such a large company comprised of many parts that I had a bit of struggle understanding it all.
The core Hexagon involves measurement, metrology. They have precision measurement tools for the small, medium, and very large targets. Tools for building applications complement these instruments.
Hexagon also comprises much software, having acquired Intergraph years ago and others since. Company focus has become easier with the announced spinoff of much of the software business into a new company called Octave.
Octave
Mattias Stenberg, who is leading Octave, explained the new company’s focus taking the musical analogy of an octave—taking it to the next level. The core of the new company consists of these four businesses from Hexagon:
Asset Lifecycle Intelligence—Intelligence that drives decision-making efficiency and lifecycle value creation
SIG—Safety, Infrastructure, and Geospatial—Act on information to save lives, improve infrastructure and enhance services
ETQ—ETQ Reliance—ETQ Reliance is a cloud-native quality management system solution (QMS), powered by an agile platform that drives 40+ best-in-class applications adaptable to your unique environment. ETQ is the leading provider of quality, EHS and compliance management SaaS software, trusted by the world’s strongest brands.
Bricsys—Hexagon AB, a global leader in digital solutions, today announced the acquisition of Bricsys, a fast-growing developer of CAD (computer-aided design) software that has been at the forefront of providing open, collaborative construction technology solutions since its founding in 2002. Its CAD platform, BricsCAD, supports 2D/3D general, mechanical, and sheet metal design and building information modelling (BIM) in one system.
I don’t know if this was supposed to be another musical reference, but as a guitarist, I’ll take it as such. Octave is Intelligence at Scale. They see themselves not just as a builder of software, but as helping customers evolve, adapt, predict, prevent by providing pre-trained agents. The platforms will be embedded, context aware, mission critical systems, validated.
This comment struck me. I concluded my first report with the thought that software becomes more powerful, yet it’s still trying to solve the problems I had in 1977. With power comes complexity. Stenberg noted a survey they conducted with C-level executives see more software, more complexity, more dashboards…and yet, less actual visibility. Systems that don’t talk to each other creating silos.
My concluding thought on my last essay was that we must not have a technical problem—we must have a people problem.
Only 20% of execs told them they are getting something from digital transformation. OK, I can’t resist thinking of an irony—yet they order their employees to use AI, or else???
They envision a process where customers build digital first, where the digital twin is a reality (he calls it “mirrorworld”). These will enable the movement from reactive to predictive (another future vision I’ve written about for 20 years or more).
A final vision—Create self-aware, resilient infrastructure.
Moving on to another product line—robotics. I shot a short video of Hexagon’s newest robot—Aeon. This “humanoid”, or human-form-factor, robot exhibits quite advanced ability to do the work of human assemblers. When I asked why they developed the robot to look and act like a robot, they told me that existing work stations are designed for humans. Therefore, this is an easy replacement for non-existent human workers on the assembly line.
Digital Twins
Returning to digital twins. I spoke with Jeremy Treverrow about uses of digital twins. Initially, customers could use Hexagon’s precision measurement technology to create a digital twin of a component part. Perhaps this is a service and repair part no longer in production with perhaps no good design information existing.
Using the Hexagon Design X software set, the imported digital twin can be exported in an igis file, used for simulation, and can even design a manufacturing process around it.
