Picture this: New SCADA platform supports larger, global networks

Wonderware says the latest release of its supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) platform responds to the growing need to manage production operations across large-scale, distributed global networks.

By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff March 3, 2009

Wonderware says the latest release of its supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) platform responds to the growing need to manage production operations across large-scale, distributed global networks.

Wonderware System Platform 3.1 was released February 17, along with In Touch 10.1, a new version of the company’s flagship human-machine interface (HMI) package.

“Wonderware System Platform 3.1 and InTouch 10.1 together deliver the software functionality needed today by users in the geographically distributed SCADA application space,” says Keith Jones, marketing program manager for Wonderware HMI/SCADA products.

According to Jones, Wonderware System Platform 3.1 offers significant benefits for users needing highly distributed, networked software solutions. In addition to scalability from 250 to more than one million I/O points, highly distributed applications can be optimized for peak performance over networks of various sizes and speeds.

New configuration options also are available, he says, making Wonderware System Platform software even easier for users to engineer pilot projects and roll out applications across multiple locations. The new platform also extends the flexibility and configurability of the Wonderware Historian, offering more options to optimize storage for analysis of information from historical data.

InTouch 10.1 delivers increased operations productivity, with new features that have been most requested by customers, Jones says. For instance, new Microsoft .NET controls provide flexible trending and alarm management capabilities. Enhancements in internationalization enable a single application to be created, and then reused by personnel in locales around the globe.

Craig Resnick, a research director with ARC Advisory Group , agrees that the new Wonderware solution address a market need.

“In spite of a turbulent global economy, initiatives such as sustainability are continuing to drive investment in software-based performance and productivity improvement solutions across many infrastructure operations such as water and wastewater, facilities, transportation and power distribution,” Resnick says. “These performance and productivity solutions—such as those built on the Wonderware System Platform 3.1 and InTouch 10.1—provide the return-on-investment and return-on-asset justification required by infrastructure operations. [The value of these systems] is proven out by improvements to key performance indicators such as overall equipment effectiveness and energy consumption monitoring that is visualized on HMI software-based digital dashboards.”