What This Group Is, 500 Words or Less

I'm always trying to explain what we do more and more concisely and had to do so for a disruption award for SARTA (Sacramento Area Regional Technology ) in 500 words or less. Well, this is what I came up with...

Ignition by Inductive Automation® has completely disrupted the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) market, upending virtually all such old-school players which are mostly international conglomerates.

Whereas traditional SCADA solutions were developed in the mid-1990s, they have advanced little since then and are ill-suited to the demands of today’s industry.

Inductive Automation, and its elegant Ignition, all-in-one server-based solution, address well known frustrations of the automation industry.  These frustrations include having to deal with long-obsoleted technology, software instability problems, antiquated licensing models, foolish business practices, and poor support.

By contrast, Ignition makes deploying and maintaining an unlimited number of rich visualization clients from the central server just a mouse click away.  While they are similar to webpages and rely on web standards, they are actually rich clients particularly suited to the demands of the industrial environment.  Entire installation takes just minutes as compared to hours or days per client for traditional SCADA software. 

The modern enterprise normally has dozens of highly fragmented systems and data stores which results in “islands of information.”  Seldom does the right information reach decision makers in time, if ever.  Old school SCADA only contributes to the problem.  Ignition on the other hand unifies these disparate systems, consolidating data with agility and ease.  Data collection can be from anywhere, analyzed in meaningful ways, and made accessible to decision makers at every level of the organization.  But most importantly, the development, deployment and maintenance of such Ignition systems are affordable thanks to its unique architecture. 

A key distinguishing factor of Ignition is its platform and modular architecture.  The platform could be considered an industrial operating system while its plugin modules (which can be written by anyone) provide functionality, much like iOS is a platform and its apps provide functionality.  This plays a key role in future proofing the Ignition product since newer technology modules can run right next to legacy ones.  The industrial automation industry screams for software longevity, a demand which until now has been unfulfilled.

While the incumbent players all embrace Microsoft solidly, they ignore the larger global picture as we see increasing adoption of Linux and OSX.  Ignition is built with Java (not Javascript), which is fully cross-platform, so users can run on any operating system equally well out of the box.  While old-school Microsoft diehards are hacking away for six months or more, desperately trying to make their software run on the next version of Windows, we are already running on it from day one.  And with every hack, their systems become less and less stable. 

All of our innovative firsts would take a hundred pages to describe.  These include concurrent web-launched IDEs (Integrated Development Environments), single file backup of the entire system, seamless integration between modules, and on and on.  But, the ones described here are some of the overarching ones. 

Probably the most important innovative first, which is a radical departure from the rest of the field, is Ignition’s flat pricing model by the server.  One Ignition server license can replace hundreds of individual licenses required under the other guy’s model.   The cost differential is astounding.  This means unlimited visualization clients, unlimited database connections, unlimited plant floor connections, unlimited web service connections, unlimited IDEs, and more - all for one flat cost.

Industrial software projects are no longer limited by cost considerations.  So, now affordable, effective solutions can be rolled out which increase collaboration between all parts of an enterprise.  Metcalfe’s Law is in play here.  It states that the utility of any communications system is equal to the number of users squared (utility = users²).  A single Ignition server instance can service many users.

How did I do?