One of the reasons we chose Java for Ignition is its cross-platform capability. Of course, you would expect that most deployments would be on Windows, which is the case, but there is an interesting trend going on. We are seeing a creep away from Windows and one such case really took me off-guard. One of our customers has deployed on HP-Unix. I didn't even know that was possible.Then there is the case of one customer who knew us from the days of FactoryPMI and FactorySQL who waited until Ignition was ready because they insisted on running on Macs.
The Linux crowd is really starting to grow and I expect it to dominate on the plant floor eventually. In fact, I have this little blue box from Eurotech on my desk running Ignition on Linux. That little box is good for -40 to +85 degC so you can put it on the plant floor or in the field without any air conditioning whatsoever. And it only consumes 3 watts of power so it's perfect for solar applications. Pretty cool!
As I've mentioned before, I consider each and every Windows version (or even different service packs) a different platform as well, despite apparent similarities. I see a lot of industrial software that isn't supported on Vista or Windows 7 or even XP SP3. But by using Java, we don't care what the platform is being used, for the server or for the clients, and that removes one huge headache for most people.
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