I’m tackling Internet of Things Edge computing in the first of many posts as I finally have some time to gather my notes and thoughts after an intense four days in Orlando at the ARC Advisory Group Industry Forum.
Announced during the Monday press conferences and later at a special breakfast presentation, Inductive Automation announced a series of products designed to take more power to the edge of the network. Certainly much work has been done regarding computing at the edge for the past couple of years.
So, Inductive Automation announced a March release for a line of products built on an embedded version of Ignition—Ignition Edge. Inductive Automation was recently in the news with an announcement that growth has been so good that it bought a building to house its growing workforce.
Ignition Edge by Inductive Automation is a line of lightweight, low-cost Ignition products to be embedded into field and OEM devices at the edge of the network. Ignition is designed to work on central servers and deploy to multiple clients, while Ignition Edge products can be installed on devices at the edge. With Ignition and Ignition Edge together, organizations can build scalable and affordable enterprise-wide systems.
“To truly have IIoT, industrial organizations need a new architecture,” said Don Pearson, chief strategy officer for Inductive Automation. “A big part of that involves collecting data near the source, at the edge of the network. It means polling as close to the devices as possible, rather than from the SCADA system. Ignition Edge is a very affordable way to get data from the edge and into a database so it can be leveraged for analysis and better decision-making.”
One of the products features embedded MQTT protocol. Cirrus Link Solutions is based in Kansas City, Kan. Arlen Nipper, president of Cirrus Link, is a co-inventor of Message Queueing Telemetry Transport (MQTT). MQTT is a lightweight pub/sub messaging transport that’s perfectly suited to the IIoT. MQTT provides fast, bi-directional communication in a very simple manner, so it requires minimal network bandwidth.
Nipper co-invented MQTT with Andy Stanford Clark of IBM specifically for real-time, mission-critical SCADA systems. Ignition Edge capitalizes on MQTT for more efficient, easier access to data. “Having the power of Ignition extend down to edge devices in the field offers a disruptive approach to how industrial network infrastructures are designed, deployed, and managed,” said Nipper.
Ignition Edge Panel enables creation of local HMIs for field devices. It enables edge-of-network HMI functionality with robust Ignition features, including one local client, one remote web client for mobile access, and alarming features including email notification. It includes one week of data buffering for trending and local client fallback for mission-critical applications.
Ignition Edge Enterprise acts as an Agent Gateway in a multi-Gateway Ignition system by leveraging the Ignition Enterprise Administration Module (EAM). So it requires that the EAM be installed on the central Ignition Gateway. It’s got powerful features such as remote backup, restoration management, centralized monitoring of performance and health metrics, and remote alarm notification. Edge Enterprise comes with up to a week of data buffering, and it can synchronize local tag history to a central Ignition historian for store-and-forward.
Ignition Edge MQTT by Cirrus Link was developed by Cirrus Link Solutions, a strategic partner of Inductive Automation. Ignition Edge MQTT enables publication of field device data through MQTT. It turns virtually any field device, such as a touch panel or a client terminal, into a lightweight, MQTT-enabled edge gateway. Ignition Edge MQTT uses MQTT to transmit data to any MQTT broker and supports the Sparkplug data-encoding specification.
HMI SCADA software builds the platform of the Industrial Internet of Things. Yet, many of the traditional companies apparently are not pursuing it as actively as in the past as they spend more time on somewhat “higher end” software—business intelligence and analytics.
So, is there money to be made in this business?
To that end, I have been watching the growth of Inductive Automation for more than ten years. It has introduced the Software as a Service, or cloud-based application, to the industrial space greatly lowering costs for customers. At the same time, everything it builds is IT-friendly. So the OT people can make friends with the IT people.
Well, business has been good enough that Inductive Automation has purchased a building for its corporate headquarters that’s 2½ times larger than its current space. The fast-growing company will remain in Folsom, and will move into its new location in July.
Inductive Automation makes industrial automation software that’s used in virtually every industry and in more than 100 countries. The company’s key product is Ignition by Inductive Automation. Ignition is an industrial application platform with fully integrated tools for building solutions in human-machine interface (HMI), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
The company has grown rapidly since its inception in 2003. Since the launch of Ignition in 2010, Inductive Automation’s revenues have grown at an average annual rate of more than 60 percent. The company’s growth has been fueled by powerful software and an unlimited licensing model, which together remove economic and technological barriers for industrial organizations seeking more data from their operations and processes.
“We’re committed to Folsom,” said Steve Hechtman, president and CEO of Inductive Automation. “When we first moved here from Sacramento, we had 20 employees. Now we have more than 100, and we look forward to continuing our growth at our new site. The larger building will allow us to expand to about 300 team members, as we continue to serve the global marketplace in industrial automation.”
Folsom community leaders are very happy with the company’s decision to stay in Folsom. “We are pleased that Inductive Automation calls Folsom home,” said Evert W. Palmer, city manager for Folsom. “We celebrate their success, and we are thankful for their contributions to Folsom’s strong and growing ecosystem of industry-leading technology companies.”
“Inductive Automation is a shining example of strong leaders with a well-defined vision to grow their company strategically and profitably,” said Joe Gagliardi, CEO/president of the Greater Folsom Partnership. “Their commitment to stay in Folsom and build their business is adding energy to the already-strong job growth we are experiencing in 2017. All segments of the Folsom economy benefit from the success of Inductive Automation.”
Inductive Automation recently named the six recipients of its Ignition Firebrand Awards for 2016. The announcements were made at the Ignition Community Conference (ICC), held September 19-21 in Folsom, Calif.
The Ignition Firebrand Awards recognize system integrators and industrial organizations that use the Ignition software platform to create innovative new projects. Ignition by Inductive Automation is an industrial applications platform with fully integrated tools for building solutions in human-machine interface (HMI), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
Ignition is used in more than 100 countries. Its popularity has helped Inductive Automation increase its revenues at an average annual rate of more than 40 percent over the past six years.
The Ignition Firebrand Awards are presented every year at ICC. The award-winning projects are part of the ICC Discover Gallery, which featured the best 18 Ignition projects submitted by integrators and industrial organizations. Inductive Automation received a record number of entries this year, and saw more innovation than ever before.
“We were extremely impressed with the quality and variety of Discover Gallery entries this year,” said Don Pearson, chief strategy officer for Inductive Automation. “It made it very difficult to select the top six. But we were very pleased to see that this year’s Firebrand Award winners represent a deeper level of understanding of the power of Ignition than we’ve ever seen before.”
“When you install the Ignition platform, it does nothing on its own,” said Travis Cox, co-director of sales engineering for Inductive Automation. “It’s inspiring to see what people can do as they innovate and build these creative and unique applications with Ignition.”
These six award winners demonstrated the versatility and power of Ignition:
Bixby International (Newburyport, Mass.) had one of its managers learn and implement Ignition on his own, creating numerous screens for three plastics extrusion lines, showing real-time data on a number of clients.
HTC High Tech Consultant (Vicenza, Italy) used Ignition to eliminate paper and improve production efficiencies for a large producer of leather products. The solution included the ability to expand Ignition to more than 100 tablets.
Kymera Systems (Leduc, Alberta, Canada) used Ignition to provide an oil company with a highly cost-effective, new SCADA system that worked with numerous types of legacy field devices.
MartinCSI (Plain City, Ohio) used Ignition in a highly creative way to make a realistic training simulation of a water purification system used by the United States Army.
Tyrion Integration Services (Bakersfield, Calif.) used Ignition and message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) to provide real-time data for testing of oil wells. The project included a cloud-based solution and expanded mobile capabilities.
Vertech (Phoenix, Ariz.; Irvine, Calif.; Nashville, Tenn.) created a White Box with Ignition that can connect to a brewery’s bottling or canning line, unobtrusively, in just one day. The White Box instantly delivers valuable data that brewers were not able to see previously.
In this podcast, also viewable in video, I discuss the 2016 Ignition Customer Conference from Inductive Automation–and the pseudo competition between OPC UA and MQTT/Sparkplug. Mostly it’s all about getting the right information into your Industrial Software (HMI/SCADA) application.
It was interesting that spokespeople for the two communication technologies were at the same venue. There was an undercurrent of competition, although many seemed to think there was a place for each.
Also available as a podcast download or on iTunes, Amazon and other outlets.
The industrial software market has changed dramatically over the past 13 years. One market disruptor hails from just outside Sacramento, California. I still remember meeting Steve Hechtman at an ISA show probably in 2003. He talked about developing HMI/SCADA industrial software in an entirely new way.
He told me that Inductive Automation was developing software written in Java and using IT-friendly technologies. Not only that, he would have a business model that totally disrupted the prevalent licensing by seats.
Hechtman greeted a capacity audience at the 2016 Ignition Customer Conference Sept. 19. The 430+ attendees exhausted the capacity of the Harris Center in Folsom, CA. The company has experienced double-digit growth every year since it started. It has been profitable every quarter since the launch of its flagship product, Ignition, in 2010. Privately held, it has no debt and no investors.
The company’s mission has been to reduce friction. Reduce friction to use the product, to buy the product, to develop using the product. Or, to quote from the presentation, “Our mission is to create industrial software that empowers our customers to swiftly turn great ideas into reality by removing all technological and economic obstacles.”
The technology allows for a 3-minute installation. It is scalable from a Raspberry Pi to enterprise servers.
Rather than calling Ignition HMI/SCADA software, Hechtman refers to it as a platform. Not only does Inductive Automation build modules to sit on it, the company makes it easy for customers to build, and even sell, modules, too. Part of that removing friction thing.
Hechtman brought up the IIoT and the hype surrounding it. The Gartner Hype Cycle plots a curve from early thoughts to euphoria plummeting to the trough of disillusionment to a partial recovery where 20%-30% of companies use and gain benefit from the technology. He suggested that Ignition builds a bridge over the trough of disillusionment to beneficial application of the IIoT.
Chief Strategy Officer Don Pearson followed with the other theme of the week—IT/OT convergence. ”We’ve been doing that from the beginning,” he stated.
Most people have talked about driving convergence from the IT side. That’s all backwards according to Pearson. The OT side should drive the convergence partly through adopting IT-friendly technology and learning from IT folks about their strengths such as security.
One last sign of growth—the number of partners exhibiting in the foyer. More than I can list, but start with Opto 22, Bedrock Automation, Cirrus-Link, Seeq. The company has vision and drive. And financial stability.
Summary
Here is a link to an interview I recorded with two of the original developers–Colby Clegg and Carl Gould. Owner/President Steve Hechtman was in the room, but I don’t recall that he said anything. I threw a digital audio recorder on the conference room table in early 2011. The company has grown into new offices and is now looking for more office space since then.
There was a lot of buzz at the conference. There were people from many countries, but many also were from large manufacturing companies. Several large systems integrators brought several engineers. The organizers asked if I would lead a “meet up” or round-table discussion on Monday before the actual kickoff. Wow–there were several really smart people in attendance. It was a great geek discussion.
If you are involved with developing applications with industrial software, you should check out next year’s conference. Even if you are not a customer, it’s worth it just to learn from others who come.
“To truly have IIoT, industrial organizations need a new architecture,” said Don Pearson, chief strategy officer for Inductive Automation. “A big part of that involves collecting data near the source, at the edge of the network. It means polling as close to the devices as possible, rather than from the SCADA system. Ignition Edge is a very affordable way to get data from the edge and into a database so it can be leveraged for analysis and better decision-making.”
Hechtman greeted a capacity audience at the 2016 Ignition Customer Conference Sept. 19. The 430+ attendees exhausted the capacity of the Harris Center in Folsom, CA. The company has experienced double-digit growth every year since it started. It has been profitable every quarter since the launch of its flagship product, Ignition, in 2010. Privately held, it has no debt and no investors.
Chief Strategy Officer Don Pearson followed with the other theme of the week—IT/OT convergence. ”We’ve been doing that from the beginning,” he stated.
