Latest updates, features in universal automation platform

At the Ignition Community Conference 2024, new functionality in Ignition 8.3, Inductive Automation's industrial application platform for OT and IT, span applications, historians, and infrastructure with a focus on connectivity, storage, streaming and security.

By Stephanie Neil October 30, 2024
Courtesy: Stephanie Neil, Control Engineering, WTWH Media

Insights on an industrial platform for IT/OT convergence 

  • Scheduled for release in January 2025, system integrators can start beta testing Inductive Automation’s Ignition 8.3 in December.
  • The modernized platform includes upgrades around applications, historians, and infrastructure
  • Enhancements solve data issues around connectivity, storage, streaming, security, and deployment.

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Inductive Automation continues to build upon Ignition, its industrial automation platform that serves as a centralized hub uniting operations technology (OT) software with the IT infrastructure. 

In September, during the annual Ignition Community Conference (ICC) which brings together the Inductive Automation ecosystem of system integrators, end users, and technology partners, executives announced Ignition 8.3. Ready for beta testing in December and expected to be released in January 2025, Inductive Automation CEO Colby Clegg described 8.3 as “the most substantial and ambitious release we’ve ever done.” 

Ignition, commonly known for its SCADA/HMI software, has evolved into a toolkit that enables integrators to build OT interfaces that can easily connect to the appropriate data or systems. The newest functionality in version 8.3 addresses applications, historians, and infrastructure, which, according to the company, will establish Ignition as a fully modernized platform and a key driver for digital transformation in manufacturing. 

Engineering forces at work 

With a bigger Inductive Automation development team working on evolving the platform, and a one-to-one ratio between software engineers and quality assurance engineers, Clegg said that the newest release represents the team’s ability to balance four key plant floor forces: innovation, continuity, stability, and security. 

According to Clegg, innovation and security require constant evolution and change, which fight against the desire for continuity and stability, which are paramount for plant floor operations. 

“By focusing on achieving balance with these four forces, our ultimate goal is that through Ignition we can also help you balance these same four forces that are at play in all of your systems as well,” said Carl Gould, Inductive Automation’s chief technology officer. 

Inductive Automation's Colby Clegg, CEO (left) and Carl Gould, CTO. Courtesy: Inductive Automation

Colby Clegg, CEO (left) and Carl Gould, CTO. Courtesy: Inductive Automation

The successful balancing act is represented in 8.3 enhancements that solve specific data issues related to connectivity, storage, streaming, security, and deployment. 

Ignition 8.3: Applications 

In the applications category, the first upgrade is a complete redesign of the Gateway web interface that is more intuitive, easier to use, and scalable. Navigation has been reimagined with a logical and structured layout that makes it easier to find configuration and diagnostic data. And the user interface combines speed and scalability, as remains fast regardless of how many items are configured. 

Second, the Perspective module, a visualization tool for building mobile-responsive HTML applications, now has its own integrated drawing tools. This bespoke drawing interface includes vector editing and can connect visual representations of drawings to the real-time state in the system. Perspective also includes input and edit forms, which are a common part of any app but can take a long time to build. Now, they are easily configured in the interface with automatic layouts and automatic mobile responsiveness, the executives said. 

Third, how Perspective packages up data offline is addressed. The use case here is intended for situations where an operator might need to work somewhere remote with no connectivity but still need to gather data, read meters, fill out maintenance forms, etc. Here, the operator has offline use, and when the device is later returned to connectivity, a data synch to the Ignition gateway project happens. 

“Ignition is all about data. Acquiring it, contextualizing it, storing it, and building useful applications around it. One of Ignition’s biggest strengths is all of the different ways data can be used and manipulated,” Gould explained, noting that is why Ignition is often called multiple things, from a data hub to an edge data collector or even a Data Ops platform. “It can be all of those things because of all the different ways data can be used.” 

Another way data can be made more useful is through the next big new 8.3 feature called Event Streams. 

Event Streams is a pipeline that maps event data from a source to a handler. When 8.3 launches early next year, it will have sources and handlers for some of the key systems in Ignition, which basically means Event Streams are a bus for data in and out of Ignition, as well as for data inside of Ignition enabling connections between many subsystems. 

“Event Streams is going to be a huge game-changer,” said Travis Cox, chief technology evangelist at Inductive Automation. “It’s going to really accelerate the movement of data from OT systems into business systems. And we’re going to be able to leverage the full power of all the connectivity options in Ignition, from OPC UA to MQTT, SQL, the new Kafka connection, and a lot more.” 

Inductive Automation's Travis Cox and Kevin McClusky at the Ignition Community Conference 2024.

Inductive Automation’s Travis Cox and Kevin McClusky at the Ignition Community Conference 2024. Courtesy: Stephanie Neil, Control Engineering, WTWH Media

Cox explained that Kafka is the standard enterprise message bus used to talk to ERP, scheduling systems, and more. “With Event Streams, it can move data in unique ways without writing a single line of code.” 

Ignition 8.3: Historian 

In the past, Inductive Automation’s approach to storing data has been to use SQL databases as the historian because it is an IT-supported technology that stores any kind of data. But it’s not a robust historian with time series data. There are, however, new IT-based tools for IoT, for example, that store and manage time series data. 

By leveraging this new time series option, the development team created a framework inside Ignition 8.3 that includes a public application programming interface (API) to quickly implement new implementations of new historians around any technology. 

While this means Ignition is still not a historian, it is indeed a platform for building historians. It also includes the first implementation of an interface called Ignition Power Historian, an embedded, in-process time series capability for storing data with minimal configuration. 

Ignition 8.3: Infrastructure 

The topic of OT and IT convergence means bringing together two worlds with different engineering requirements. To bridge these two worlds, concepts like containerization, orchestration, infrastructure-as-code, and source control, which are standard tools in a modern IT infrastructure, must be addressed in the OT environment as well. 

In 8.3, all configuration is stored in simple text-based configuration files which means everything in Ignition is compatible with source control systems. 

“In 8.3 we’ve eliminated the internal database, which means all configuration, settings, project resources, and even tags are in simple and clean JSON, which means they can be versioned, tracked, and managed with source control tools,” Clegg said. “Now, 8.3 is the most advanced and most IT-friendly SCADA system.” 

To that end, the new web UI is completely powered by a Restful API, which means Ignition instances can be programmatically configured and managed using standard IT technologies. 

Other 8.3 IT features include “secrets management,” where all passwords and credentials are kept in a virtual vault to be easily managed and to mitigate risk. And orchestration using Helm Charts, configuration files with basic and advanced scripts that can be cross-platform. Helm charts are for an orchestration system called Kubernetes, that can help with large deployments, Cox said. 

With all of these new capabilities, 8.3 will provide manufacturers with a foundation for developing next-generation applications. 

“If you want to achieve true convergence between operations technology and information technology on a digital transformation journey, what you need is a platform that perfectly bridges the unique requirements on both sides. A platform for building OT apps on an IT infrastructure, and that’s what Ignition is,” Gould said. 

Edited by Stephanie Neil, editorial director, Control Engineering, WTWH Media, sneil@wtwhmedia.com. 

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Author Bio: Stephanie Neil is VP and Editorial Director for WTWH Media's Control & Automation Engineering Group.