Open Source Publish-Clients for IIoT

Cirrus Link will release open-source MQTT publish-client libraries through the Eclipse Foundation in the second quarter of 2016. Libraries will be available in C, C#, Java, Python and JavaScript. Java will be available as a standalone library, as well as a module for Kura. Kura is a Java/OSGi-based framework for IoT gateways.

These libraries leverage the open and popular Google Protobuffers standard, as well as the Kura definition for data which just happens to align nicely with common PLC datatypes. They will be released concurrently with the open Sparkplug standard which tracks "state" though the use of birth and death certificates.

What is little understood by the larger IoT audience is that in the IIoT setting, "state" is required. SCADA is useless without state. The Sparkplug standard wraps up the MQTT definition, Protobuffers for data representation, Kura specifications for datatype definition, birth and death certificates to provide "state" and other simple mechanisms to make MQTT useful in SCADA applications.

Any publish-client compatible with the Sparkplug specification will also be a proper Ignition citizen through the use of the MQTT Distributor module. This makes me want to build some sort of edge of network device using Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone. I've got a few ideas. Now I just need some time.

What is Inductive Automation's Market share?

Recently we were asked what Inductive Automation's market share is.  Good question.  Clearly what was being asked was, "what percent of the SCADA market does Ignition have?"  But asking that question misses the bigger picture.  The diverse applications to which Ignition is deployed defy any simple categorization as "SCADA".  Nonetheless, I will address the SCADA market share question later in this post.  But as knowledgeable users already know, there is no established category that adequately defines Ignition.

A good analogy of this is the history of the cell phone.  In the beginning the cellphone was just a telephone.  Everyone understood you could make calls with it and nearly everyone had one.  Then the smartphone came which handled emails, web browsing, scheduling, photography, video, games and a thousand other things.  It became a viable second office.  It's no longer a cell phone,  it's a handheld computer.  It's in a whole new category that happens to make phone calls also.

It's exactly the same with Ignition.  Ignition is clearly in a category of its own, and yes, it can do SCADA too.  But it is an IT friendly, all-in-one, rapid development and deployment platform that can create custom database applications, or anything else at an unbelievably low price.  So what is this category called?  I'm looking for suggestions.

Old SCADA is like using a horse buggy.  Ignition is like driving a Mercedes AMG ML63.

That gets us back to "what is our market share?"  Simple.  100% of our category.  Because no one, I really do mean no one, even comes close to our functionality.  Some companies are trying to copy us, but they clearly don't understand much about Ignition.  A bunch of programmers and marketers in an ivory tower will never understand Ignition, nor do they understand actual needs of the market.

Now as I promised, let's look narrowly at the traditional SCADA market.  What's our market share? There are different market share metrics used like new sales and install base, but how would you ever measure either now that there's Ignition?  Ignition antiquates these metrics.  Consider this... install one Ignition server, deploy 25 runtime clients, use 100k tags, create 5 simultaneous projects with 250 screens each and you spend about 13K.  Now rip it all out and replace it with your traditional SCADA software and what will you spend?  Maybe $65K? More?

Let's extend the example a bit.  Let's say you want to add 25 more runtime clients and go up to unlimited tags.  What do you pay?  Another $65K?  More?  With Ignition it costs you nothing more.

So tell me now, what is the size of the SCADA market really?  And since Ignition is sold at a fixed price by the server with unlimited runtime clients, unlimited tags, unlimited concurrent development seats, unlimited database connections, and unlimited historian points, how do you measure the cost to fulfill a given system's requirements?  I'm sorry to say folks.. we just broke all traditional market share metrics.

From our perspective though, it's not all about SCADA.  We do SCADA also.  But how about fulfilling all the needs of  Production, QA, Scheduling, Maintenance or any other department and making it all work seamlessly at the speed of light as a paperless system.  The market for that is huge.  How huge?  I doubt anyone knows because the category has never been adequately defined.  But whatever it is, we've got 100% of it because no one else is even trying.

Why your SCADA system should be more like your smart phone

There is a better model for how a SCADA system should be designed. A good example of this better approach is probably sitting in your pocket. It’s your smart phone. Your smart phone runs on a set of powerful, yet independent apps. Why is that a smart idea?

• You can add or delete apps without restarting your smart phone.
• Apps can be easily upgraded while the other apps continue to operate.
• If an app crashes, it doesn't take down the entire system. 
• You can select the exact apps you need to provide the exact functionality you want on your phone.
• Smart phone apps are relatively inexpensive without requiring large annual licensing fees.

Compare that to how SCADA systems have traditionally been designed:

• Adding software requires a complete restart of the entire system.
• Software upgrades not only require everything grinding to a halt, they can often break another part of the system causing a cascading need for upgrades.
• If a piece of software crashes, it freezes the entire system.
• Often you must pay for functionality you don’t use or need.
• Annual licensing fees for software can be astronomical.  

There is another advantage to having a modular approach to manufacturing software. That’s that third parties can also develop specific applications that add powerful functionality. Look on your smart phone. Many of the most popular and useful apps are not created by Apple or Google. They are created by third party developers.

That’s why Ignition was created using a modular approach. In addition to the key modules that the Inductive Automation team creates, other companies are creating some very cool modules that you can easily add.  It makes a system more versatile and powerful. I think it just makes sense.

Technology is constantly advancing. Isn't it time that SCADA moves up to the New SCADA standard?

The New SCADA

When we describe Inductive Automation and Ignition, there's just so darn much to say.  But I've found a way to boil it down to three words ----- The New SCADA.  You'd be missing the point if you thought I was just talking about new features. What I'm really talking about is the New User Experience.  What I'm really talking about are the Four Pillars we're built on, which are the reason why we're the fastest growing SCADA company in the world.

What are the four pillars?  1) New Technology Model,  2) New Licensing Model,  3) New Business Model,  4) New Ethical Model.

Let's start with the last one, New Ethical Model.  How many SCADA companies have sold out? And what happens to their end-users, integrators and employees after they do?  What happens to the vision and innovation after the founder is gone?  What are the ethics when a few people become enriched at the expense of an entire user base and thousands of supporters?  We've been approached several times and we aren't selling out. We're all about reinventing the industry and delivering the New User Experience and that's what motivates us.

How about the New Business Model?  Most SCADA companies are just Marketing Companies.  Is there any real innovation?  Well I don't see anything meaningful.  Our New Business Model balances Development (new innovation), Quality Assurance, Marketing, Sales, Support, Accounting, Training, and about 20 other functions into a well functioning pipeline all focused solely on delivering the New Customer Experience.

Now let's talk about the New Technology Model.  We're not talking about new or more features - that's just background noise; what we're talking about is a whole New Paradigm.  ARC Advisory Group says we're disrupting the whole SCADA industry.  They're right.  Who else can do a fully featured install in about a minute?  Who else can run on practically any OS (including any version of Windows)?  Who else developed an elegant system from the ground up with a holistic approach, rather than a short-sighted, bolted-on, hacked up and unmanageable mess?  If I were to list all our innovative firsts it would take a hundred pages but all these are just different aspects of the same thing - a totally new and sensible Paradigm.

Finally, there's the New Licensing Model.  It's the zero hassle licensing model.  An unlimited licensing model, sold by the server, with a single affordable price no matter how many clients or tags are used.  And we're not talking about flimsy web browser clients.  We're talking about real client applications that launch as easily a web page (it's pure magic).  The conventional licensing models out there are antiquated and only deliver marginal value.  We have a sales tactic - you might as well know it - get people talking about their experiences with conventional licensing.  We get a bird's eye view of thousands of really pissed-off people.

The three words - The New SCADA - aptly define Inductive Automation and Ignition.  I didn't just wake up one morning and say "Hey! I have a great idea, let's start a SCADA company!"  No!  If even one SCADA company had even a semblance of the four pillars, I would have used it and Inductive Automation would never have been born.

I love the software and company we've created.  But more, I love the Community that's formed up around it.  If you missed our ICC in 2013 then you missed something HUGE - the Community.  In twenty-five years I've never seen anything like it, and frankly, I'm completely taken aback, and humbled, by your faith in us. Thank you.  That's why we're here and that's why I get out of bed in the morning. If sometimes I seem a bit gruff, it's not motivated out of greed - rather, it's motivated by my sense of responsibility to keep the show on the road.  It's more about managing risks so that we can keep this phenomenon going and growing, and so you'll still find us here, an even better company, in twenty years.

I think the madness of grow fast or fail fast, and then sell if successful, is just that - Madness.  What about the people who made it successful? Well, we're not going down that road.  We love what we do, we love this Community and we really do want to make the world a better place!

So there you have it - The New SCADA!

Is bloatware really necessary?

There was a thread on our forum recently that made the point of how fast and easy it is to install Ignition. I am so glad to see people notice this. It's a big thing. Just imagine your HMI/ SCADA/ MES server just crashed - like a hard drive failure. Now tell me how long it would take to reinstall, reactivate and get all of your projects functioning again. I shutter to think about how long it would take to restore some traditional systems.

With Ignition you're talking about minutes. Seriously, minutes. Even if you have fifteen projects on that one Ignition server this still holds true. (Is it even possible to have fifteen projects on a traditional HMI/ SCADA server?) You just download Ignition via Internet (a few minutes), install Ignition (a few minutes) and restore your single backup file (a few minutes). And with that single file restore all of your communication settings, database settings, project settings - everything is restored and you're good to go. And it will run for two hours at a time fully functional until you reactivate the license which only takes a few seconds. Some traditional systems make licensing reactivation a nightmare - that's crazy. Like kicking a dog when he's down.

Getting back to the main point, I'm really glad our easy install is being noticed by our users. We have so many firsts with Ignition it's easy to lose that message.

The question is, why are we the only ones? IMHO, I think most traditional software was created in the 90's and then tacked-on to, band-aided, and wrappered until it became bloatware. Possibly, as time moved forward and developers came and went (face it, no publicly held corporation is going to keep good developers for very long) later developers didn't understand what earlier developers did so they hacked. How else do you end up with GB installs now requiring DVDs for relatively simple applications?

Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it was just a lack of good vision and planning from the start. I don't know. All I do know is that it doesn't require DVDs, GBs or hours or days to install and restore a system unless you make it that way.

The Value of Fast SCADA Installation & Development

When integrators install Ignition for their customers they deliver more bang for the buck in two ways. By an order of magnitude, they save their customers money both on software itself and on the labor to develop applications and deploy them. It's a double-sided benefit for end-users.

If you're an integrator, you might say, "but that's less work for me!" From experience I can tell you that's not true. I've discovered that in the same number of hours you will deliver way more functionality and end-users will love you for it. Then they will ask you to do even more. It's a win-win proposition. Essentially, what I have found is that they finally feel like they are getting the value they always expected.

This is a valuable concept you can use to your advantage as you offer your services.

Also consider this: Who wants to pay for an integrator to spend all week just to install and deploy HMI/SCADA/MES software? That's a huge waste of time and money and it makes the end-user feel like he's getting milked. Enough with that! Why should an installation and deployment take more than a few minutes? Spend the rest of your time building what the customer really wants and deploy it to a hundred clients with just a mouse click.

End-Users Are Beginning To Expect More From Integrators
End-users are starting to take all this for granted. I've been witness to the overwhelming reception of Ignition by end-users once they truly understand it. Hundreds of other integrators have discovered this as well. But now many end-users have come to expect what Ignition delivers as the new norm. When integrators approach these end-users with the old way they're going to get laughed right out of the place. I was recently a witness to a CEO ridiculing an integrator who proposed doing it the old way. It was embarrassing for me to watch.

Virtually all other software I'm aware of is so '90s. Relational databases are a way of life now in manufacturing yet most HMI/SCADA software treats it as an afterthought if they handle it at all. Sure, you could band-aid something together but why would you want to when you could be delivering real value in a fraction of the time? You want to feel loved? Well trust me, that's how you do it.

Offer Higher Value Before Your Competitors Do
Integrators should always be on the look out for better ways to do things more efficiently. Some integrators say, "I just do what the customer tells me." Do that at your own peril because one day the end-user will discover it on his own and some other integrator will be putting it in.

In one case recently, an integrator lost about a year's worth of work when another integrator showed the customer two bids: one for what the end-user requested, and an alternative bid using Ignition. The customer decided to use Ignition because the integrator showed that for the same amount of labor he could deliver more functionality – and more value for the money. He's feelin' the love now!

"Softwar" - the future of MES and SCADA

Hate to keep beating a dead horse. This is really funny unless you happen to be the one getting hit with punitive upgrade fees.

Actually, all these per tag, per client, per designer seat, per database connection licensing models are history. One big SCADA company "graciously" got rid of their per tag licensing model only to replace it with a per screen licensing model. Thanks for the "help" – probably the most liberal licensing model to come along in SCADA in the last ten years (except for Ignition, of course!).

Truth be told, the whole client-server model of MES and SCADA is on an evolutionary dead end. Not my words – those belong to Larry Ellison, except he was referring to IT practices of ten years ago. Softwar is a book about Oracle and Larry Ellison (its CEO and main founder) . It's one of my favorite books because it's a blueprint of things to come in our industry. There's an uncanny parallel between Ellison's predictions of ten years ago for the IT industry (which have come true) and what's happening in our controls industry today. You should read the book.

So what was Ellison saying? He was saying database centricity was the only viable model. He said the client-server model only distributed complexity and was an unsustainable model. He said it was on an evolutionary dead end. As I read those words I was saying "Yea! That's what I've been saying all along!" Only he said it first and history has proven him right.

Ellison was also talking about his rationale for the Oracle eBusiness Suite. He reasoned that all applications at the ERP level should have a common data store, common data schema, common user interface and should deliver common business processes "out-of-the-box." This would prevent data fragmentation, unsustainable support requirements and eliminate the cost prohibitive modifications required to make heterogeneous applications work together (though poorly).

This is exactly what we're doing with the Ignition MES Suite. You haven't seen the whole suite yet – just scheduling, production, downtime and OEE so far. But in the coming year and just beyond, expect to see the most impressive suite of MES functionality available anywhere and completely in alignment with these principles.

We go one step further though with our licensing model because you just pay for the server. Then you can develop with the included web-launched designer, web-launch as many clients as you want, create as many projects as you want, use as many tags as you want and never be constrained again. Everything that applies to our unlimited SCADA suite applies to our MES suite too. Go for it!

Today, even a kid could install Ignition

We have been, since the beginning, fanatical about delivering greater and greater user friendliness. I wanted, and demanded, an installation that took minutes and which worked the first time, every time, when downloaded and installed.

FactorySQL and FactoryPMI were revolutionary products. But they were separate products that had to work with third party products before they could do anything. More than one person got lost in the installation process. But Ignition is another story. The installation process is so simple it's gotten ridiculous.

I thought, "I'll bet even a kid could install Ignition." So I decided to have my ten-year-old god-daughter give it a try. I sat her down at my desk, pointed her to our website and asked her to download Ignition and install it. I had to show her where to find it on our website, but with a little direction she downloaded Ignition and installed it. The time? Four and a half minutes! When I told her she just installed enough software to run a huge manufacturing plant, her eyes got real big and she started grinning from ear to ear.

If you think I'm exaggerating, you should try it for yourself by downloading it here. If you think it sounds too good to be true, because you've installed other SCADA/MES software that took all day or several days, then give Ignition a try and convince yourself. If you think the learning curve would be too much, just remember my god-daughter – if even a ten year old could do it ...

So what can you do with software that installs in under five minutes? It's got to be pretty limited, right? Wrong. If you really want to know what it can do, read my earlier blog entitled "The Three Minute Misconception". Not only can you start developing right away, but you can have a simple application up and running in half an hour (not to mention launching a dozen clients). But the best part is, you don't even have to contact us to try it out.

Just so you know, we don't do those funky 30-day trials. Our trial is unlimited just like everything else about Ignition. Splurge on it!

Outsourcing Development... Not!

I was caught off-guard yesterday when a couple of our sales staff told me that some people thought we were outsourcing (overseas development) because Ignition is relatively inexpensive. The short story is we don't outsource.

The longer story is this... In the beginning I researched outsourcing and it was a 50/ 50 proposition, but I decided to hire locally. As you can see, it turned out to be a smart move. Two or three years ago we reconsidered outsourcing some software development and it looked pretty good on paper, but when we got down to the brass tacks and started interviewing we realized it wasn't going to work. You have to look at a broader picture when making a decision like that.

Here's the rest of the picture. Our programming requirements are intense and our feedback loop is fast. Our developers are all field savvy, even though they all come from the IT arena. Our interoffice communication is fast, accurate and bright ideas germinate spontaneously every single day. This is a priceless chemistry.

Also, we have a saying around here, "minimize the internal fiction." Our software architecture embodies this by deliberate design. So do our business processes. As soon as we start getting in the way of ourselves we clean it up right away. The bottom line is, I don't think outsourcing plays well with this idea, or our amazing chemistry.

Linux SCADA

We're seeing a pretty good up-tick in Linux installations this year. It's also interesting to note that if you search for "Linux SCADA" or "Web based Linux SCADA" you'll get a load of stuff. There are quite a few open-source projects and one of them (not web based) is pretty comprehensive.

So when my old Windows desktop bit the dust I decided to get adventurous. I download and installed Ubuntu Linux 10.10 on the bum machine and then installed Ignition on top of that. I'm no Linux guy, but the installation was no big deal. By the way, if you haven't used Ubuntu before you should grab an old machine and try – it's pretty darn nice.

To install ignition I just downloaded the Linux zip file from the Inductive Automation website and followed the instructions in the README file. Obviously, it took longer than the three minutes it normally takes on Windows, but I doubt the install took over ten or fifteen minutes total. Once I got it installed I connected over the network to a PLC, created a simple screen and launched several clients across our network. That was fun and satisfying because I resolved in the beginning not to not ask for any help if I ran into problems.

The Future For Linux SCADA

Developing professional quality SCADA software on any platform is challenging because it involves a mixture of disciplines that are hard to gather in one place. It requires the grizzled old control system expert as well as several highly skilled software developers with diverse skills in UI development, database development, hardcore coding, driver development, cryptography (if you want a modern SCADA anyway), and a lot more. Now throw in the variable of supporting different operating systems and it can get so burdensome that multi-platform support is plainly not cost effective.

Since Windows is the dominant OS, developing on Windows is the only viable choice for most companies. It doesn't make economic sense to develop SCADA on several emerging platforms while gambling they might get popular. Viewing the field of established SCADA software providers bears this out. I think every major player supports Windows only, except Inductive Automation, which is written in Java so it runs on nearly any OS.

I can tell you this was a fortunate choice on our part because if we chose anything else, that would be it. We wouldn't be supporting any other platforms for economic reasons, just like the rest.

What about the open-source projects? Any potential there? I wouldn't hold my breath for the reasons given above in the fourth paragraph. Pulling together a team like that for free seems highly unlikely to me.

Whither Silverlight?

A number of HMI / SCADA companies have now built their products upon Silverlight, and while this creates some awesome graphics, I have to standby what I've always said about building (at least in our industry) on the tumultuous Microsoft base. Last week Microsoft announced a shift of emphasis from Silverlight to HTML5. I shouldn't have been shocked because I've been predicting this, but I WAS shocked because Silverlight just hasn't been around that long.

I think it's fine that Microsoft shifts with the times and I think it is a particularly smart move for them to shift toward HTML5, but in the HMI, SCADA and MES industry such rapid shifts spell disaster. This is because in our industry things have to last a while. I think building HMI, SCADA and MES software on top technologies that change every two or three years is like building skyscrapers on top of the San Andreas fault line.

Ignition - What's the Catch?

This happens so often that I thought I better comment on it. Yesterday I was talking with one of our users who happens to be so jazzed on Ignition that he shows his plant, which uses it, to other people all the time. At the end of a recent showing he told me "they were just standing there drop-jawed but kept asking 'what's the catch?'"

This "what's the catch" question is asked so frequently I'd be totally remiss if I didn't answer it. The answer is "there is no catch."

This is hilarious, but I was once sitting in a conference room with executives of a company with the head of IT grilling me "how can you stay in business if you charge so little?" He was so used to paying insane dollars for marginal functionality that this was his yardstick. It took me about twenty minutes to handle this but I finally asked "why do you think we are charging too little? Have you ever stopped to think maybe the other guys are price gouging you?" Somehow this rang true with him and they bought Ignition.

Consider this, mobile phones used to cost $5.00 per minute and you had to wait for a channel to free up before you could talk. And the mobile units used to cost upwards of $6,000 each. Does that mean that Verizon, ATT and the rest of the cellular companies aren't making money or have a bad business model? Of course not.

Personally, I think this field has been brainwashed into thinking that HMI, SCADA and particularly MES are very hard and complicated and thus have be very expensive. Bull! This simply isn't true.

We have a different model. We sell by the server. That's all. Remember, I myself have been a system integrator for over twenty-two years. That is the perspective we come from. We have always looked for ways to increase the value of our services. Taking three days just to install software is delivering poor value. That's why we deliberately made our installation take only three minutes or so. Then you can take the remaining three days and deliver some real value.

There are certain things that irked me about software as an integrator. Some things just didn't seem right. And these things I've found to be universal. These are the exact points that we've addressed with Ignition. And one of those things is a fair and sensible pricing model. From what we hear, most integrators and end-users agree that we've accomplished just that.

Where's the price?

Ever quote a job for a customer that included HMI and SCADA software? You know how it goes, you're preparing quotes late at night or on a weekend but all the sales reps are enjoying their weekend while you work hard trying to sell their software. This wouldn't be a problem if industrial software companies openly published their prices.

Why is it they are so secretive with pricing? According to an old-hand sales person I know, there are only two reasons for hiding prices. Either they want to be able to cut custom pricing for different customers (whatever they can get away with) or they are trying to suck people into a conversation so they can close a sale.

In my experience both reasons may be applicable to industrial software sales, but on the latter I might add that by conversing with you they often gather intelligence.

For the first, I've seen pricing for industrial software for a fortune 500 company (though I'm sure I wasn't supposed to see it) and it was only 39% of the very best prices I ever heard of for that software, which was shocking to me.

For the second reason, when you get pricing for industrial software the sales rep wants to know who the customer is, what the job is, who the contact is and so forth. This is problematic because sometimes when you're doing comparative pricing the rep runs out afterwards and calls on your customer directly.

Like I have said in the past, most of the policies we adopt at Inductive Automation are based on my prior experiences as an integrator. If you want to know the price of Inductive Automation software just go to our website —it's all right there. There's too much work to get done to mess around with all these goofy pricing games.

Of course, I might be missing the real reason. Are they possibly ashamed of their prices and pricing model? What do you think?

How many patches did that take???

Wow! Our integration sister company was upgrading a major HMI vendor's software this last week and it took tons of patches and tech support to get it running. I won't mention this company by name but I will tell you that it has huge market share. Probably the largest.

So how long does it take a trained expert (in their software) to upgrade from one major version to a couple above that? Bear in mind that this end-user paid for and got all the software disks for this upgrade. Out of the box it didn't work. It took five support calls, two service pack upgrades, two patches and one hot-fix to get it mostly going. There are still problems with tag database importing from the older version and work is being done on getting graphics to come across the versions still.

Maybe from an integrator's point of view this is a good thing ... you know, lots of billable hours. But as far as I'm concerned those hours could be spent on something more constructive for the end-user of this software.

Later on in this chain of events this company learned that our sister company was the one doing the work and immediately made the mental connection with Inductive Automation (even though they are two separate entities). Then they refused to provide any further support even though the end-user paid dearly for annual support.

This I take as the ultimate compliment. The market leader petrified of us? Now that is real progress.

Actually, I don't blame them. When you consider that our install only takes three minutes, that it works first time every time and that we can even do hot upgrades it's got to be scary for them.

The biggest risk I run with my saying that is best reflected in my earlier post "The Three Minute Misconception" wherein an analyst told me he thought Ignition software would be good for only lightweight applications only because it only takes three minutes to install. Of course that drives me crazy because I know, as do our customers, that Ignition actually does far more for far less cost. About a 3–10x cost advantage and as far as functionality goes it leaves the rest in the dust!

"Sounds too good to be true."

I keep hearing over and over that our software "sounds too good to be true" (followed by the refrain "but I can't find anything wrong with it"). But why would someone say it sounds too good to be true?

Sure, with Ignition you can launch hundreds of client applications (seats) for free, sure there are unlimited free data points, sure you can launch one (or a dozen) developer seats for free, sure there is an unlimited data point historian included for free as well and and I could go on and on. But still, why does it sound too good to be true?

Could it be that some people are highly suspicious of the big automation software vendors? Could it be that there is a fear that we would suddenly switch gears and start charging for these things later? I suppose that both of these things could be the case but both are unfounded fears because that's not our gig.

The thing is, we have an entirely different philosophy. We learned long ago that price gouging suppresses progress. It's been said that business runs mainly on Excel spreadsheets. My experience bears this out. But why spreadsheets? Because they are cheap, simple and easy to understand. They get the job done.

That is why we have hassle-free licensing. That is why we sell by the server only. That is why we are penetrating into the areas where there were only spreadsheets before and this is the way we want to play the game. We are happiest when we KNOW we are giving our customers value in abundance.

The Three-Minute Misconception

I almost bust a gut the other day. I was talking with an industry analyst and asked him if he'd seen our website. He said “yes” so I asked him what he took away from it. He said it looked like a great solution for lightweight applications. Incredulously, I asked him what on our site led him to the belief the software was best suited for “lightweight” applications. His response? “It only takes three minutes to install!”

Wow! If I knew that our three-minute install would be interpreted that way, I would have directed our developers install delay loops into our installation process so that it would take four hours or four days like everyone else's does!

All joking aside, I set the record straight by citing some of the massive deployments people are doing with Ignition. He soon saw, that in fact, a single Ignition server can deploy hundreds of clients, connect to dozens of SQL databases of practically any flavor, can launch one (or a dozen) concurrent developer stations, perform as a full historian and reporting engine, run on any OS platform – and a whole lot more for a single, affordable price. But he also saw it could perform as a lightweight system too.

The truth is, when you are used to dealing with 1990’s technology, DLL hell, and systems that have been over-patched by an endless string of programmers who have come and gone, you are bound to be shocked when you see what modern technology can do.