How Digital Transformation Starts with SCADA

00:10
Laura
All right. Yeah. If a few people just walk in throughout the presentation, that’s fine. I think I’m going to start. Right. So welcome. Can you guys hear me in the back? I think the little sticky is not sticking anymore. I am, like, the least professional presenter. Sorry. Presentator. That you will encounter. So please don’t expect, like, full professionalism. Sometimes I make jokes, sometimes it’s really bad. Just laugh at them because it’ll make me feel better. Sure, yeah. If you guys can’t hear me, because it. Just raise a hand. Great. So, guys, welcome to how digital transformation starts with your SCADA. Right. In this session, like I mentioned, business talk. So we will be diving into the significance of how a robust and modern SCADA system, pretty much called the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System, is the core of digital transformation. Right.

01:19
Laura
We are going to explore the necessary elements that is going to define an effective SCADA system. Whether you’re upgrading from a legacy system or you’re just looking into using some cool, advanced solutions, we’re going to chat about how Ignition can address all of these traditional pain points. Right. So just a quick overview for those of you who don’t know me. I’m Laura Stradum, and I’m a customer success engineer at Elimin8. I’m not from America, from here, but you can contact me in business hours. Okay, so let’s start off this topic with the word platform, right? So what does platform mean? What is it? Why am I highlighting it? And why are we looking at it? Now? When we talk about Ignition specifically, we refer to it as a platform, right? But the word platform. You might have heard of Ignition as a product, right?

02:16
Laura
Let’s buy the product, let’s buy the software. We don’t see it as a product. Okay, so great. What is a platform? Now, a platform is a group of technologies that are used as a base upon which applications, processes, and technologies are developed. Ignition has a vast toolkit that allows you to build different types of applications. And because of all of the different technologies that it uses, we’re going to take a look at how this enables you to build that type of applications. Great. We know what a platform is. Why is a platform important? We all use platforms every single day. It is something that you cannot only use, but it’s usually something that you also contribute to. Here are some of the biggest drivers for why you would want to use a platform. First thing is innovation.

03:11
Laura
You want something that has a whole ecosystem of users, partners, collaborators, producers, something that can generate innovative ideas. Also, you are usually Looking for something that has faster response times, something that can keep up with all of these technology shifts, right? Then something that has, but provides lesser risks. So more stability, more users and more contributors. Or contributors, yes. And then a large community, something that is founded or can be proven by case studies, projects, training, whatever that might be. So why a platform? Why specific Ignition? And why did Inductive Automation create a platform? So legacy products usually come in different packages, right? Sure, it’s easy to use, but that means you have to maintain a lot of different products, right? You have to deploy a lot of different products.

04:17
Laura
It works, but it’s a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of maintenance. And the CEO actually of Inductive Automation, his name is Steve Hechtman. He was an SI himself for 25 years and he came across a lot of pain points. And he realized that he’s having so many struggles, so many challenges trying to solve the client’s needs. And he in essence then decided to create Ignition as a platform. And that pretty much made it the platform that it is today. That provides easy installation and upgrades. It’s open standard base, it’s cross platform, it provides rapid design and deployment, it’s scalable, it’s modular, it’s extendable, backwards compatible, it’s all these fancy things. But most importantly, it’s future proof, right? If there’s something that I want you guys to take away from this whole list is the fact that it’s future proof, right?

05:15
Laura
So we’re going to look at that a bit deeper. So the product versus platform thing, why trying to make a distinction between these two is because a product is usually closed, it’s proprietary and it only keeps the consumers in mind. Whereas a platform is centred around an open, standard based piece of technology that keeps the consumers and the producers in mind. So that is why Ignition was created as a platform. Done. Taking a picture. I’m just kidding. You’re more than welcome to take pictures. I just don’t want to continue while you were taking a picture like that. Reminds me of university. You know, you turn around, teachers got this whole thing on their board and you’re like, hold on, let me take a picture. Gone. So then you suffer anyway, right? So let’s talk about the core platform tenets, right?

06:07
Laura
Not just Ignition, but the success of a lot of platforms out there today pretty much comes. Well, it’s successful because of these different building blocks, right? First thing is that it is open access, right? It has open interfaces, but it’s also not insecure. It provides connectivity to it and from it. It also provides solutions that can give you the option to create endless possibilities and also gives you or is supported by a vibrant ecosystem. So in essence, that’s just how the value is created around this platform. Fantastic. So let’s take a look at Ignition in itself for us, SCADA, specifically Ignition, it is the building block of your digital transformation that should be your foundation right now. This is an all in one platform.

07:01
Laura
It allows you to collect and see all of your data and allows you to also build solutions that can transform your business and operational process. So since its inception, well before digital transformation was a buzzword, like for the last few years, Ignition was the driving force behind a lot of companies digital transformation efforts. Just real quickly, for those of you who don’t really know, Ignition or Inductive Automation as well, since 2003, inductive automation has helped companies and enterprises across the whole world transform their processes and operations. Now, the flagship product which is Ignition, I don’t know about any other product, but it provides an IoT solution that utilises a publish and subscribe methodology. Right. I don’t know if you guys have heard of publishing and subscribing, yes or no? I see a few. We’ve got some smart people in the room, right?

08:01
Laura
And the idea is to decouple the applications from the devices, right? So that we can take our valuable information and we can let it flow within the infrastructure to where it’s needed. Now Ignition is used in nearly every major industry today, especially in 57% of the Fortune 100 companies in the world. It’s also supported by thousands of integrators across the world, making it easy for enterprises to obviously obtain the knowledge and the expertise to help them advance their digital transformation initiatives. And it’s also a practical and a proven platform for digital transformation because it helps companies solve the problem of connecting to all of their data. So data, we hear it a lot. Data, data. What is the issue? And also the buzz term digital transformation, to be quite honest, it’s quite irritating by this time.

08:58
Laura
But if you take a look at how many times it’s being used and all of the different definitions out there, it literally boils down to one thing. How do you harness the power of your data? Right now a lot of companies ask these questions, how can we access more of our data? How do we make the most of our data? How do we provide a single source of truth for our data? Right? How do we add context? How we make it accessible for the entire business? How do we bridge the divide between IT and OT operational technology and informational technology? Right. How do we minimise or eliminate manual data entry? And then the best question is, how can we do that in a few weeks with a small budget? Okay, that’s a terrible joke.

09:45
Laura
So I would like a laugh out of it, but yes, we do. I think a lot of people get that question a lot right now you have to find a plan. How can we harness the data? Right? So let’s take a look at that problem of data. Now, data is vital to good decision-making, right? But in a lot of industrial organizations still today, the huge amounts of data are stranded in what we refer to as data silos. And it makes it inaccessible to those people who actually need it. So a majority of data is stranded infield devices because those field devices are coupled to applications. Right? That means it cuts off the data flow and it stops innovation completely. Right. I see a few heads nodding, yes. So another problem is then setting up these systems to collect this data.

10:42
Laura
It takes not even weeks, sometimes it takes months and years. So what is usually the proposed solution for this data issue? Someone will tell you on paper, “hey, this looks fantastic because the only thing we need to do is take the OT data and push it to the cloud.” That’s a terrible solution. Guys, I’m going to be quite honest, because OT data in the cloud is going to mean nothing to you. You won’t be able to utilize it. Right? Because the reality is there’s no easy way to collect all of that OT data from all of the different sources and push it into the cloud and then expect the cloud, whatever that is, and whatever is in there to understand what the hell OT data means.

11:34
Laura
All right, so the issue is because many companies go about expecting that they can solve their data by handling OT data the same way as they would handle IT data. Now, what’s the biggest difference? OT data consists of proprietary protocols, multiple data formats. There’s no context to it. It’s designed for operations. It’s different across the different market segments. It usually uses poll and response data retrieval. I misspelt data, so just ignore that. I saw it on Tuesday and I completely forgot to fix it. And then it’s directly coupled to application. And it’s usually on isolated networks where IT data needs like data objects or actual modelled data. It needs standard data formats, contextual information where it’s decoupled from the enterprise using a publish and subscribe methodology is easy to integrate and secure. Does this look familiar?

12:41
Laura
You don’t have to Read everything, because I literally just read it for you. But this is something that a lot of people see. So the power to fully, how can we say, unlock the data for our digital transformation. We have to take a look at how do we lower risks, how do we lower cost, how do we lower time? And we need to solve this operational data challenges. And we can do it by doing two things. We model the data and then we add context to the data. So this is because it’s an effort to standardise the data across the whole enterprise. So what is it? Quick look at it. Data modelling is structuring data in a unified way to make it easy to understand. This is where the UNS starts coming in.

13:30
Laura
UNS is not something that you purchase, it’s something that you build. Right. It’s a unified naming structure because we want to make it usable in the IT layer. And then we have to add context to our data. Why do we need to do it? Who can tell me what does 192 mean? The code 192, what does it mean? Meaning what? Okay, okay. That’s a quality code for a tag. Meaning. Good. Now try to explain that to Power. BI no idea. Hey, I’ve got a chuckle. Great, thank you. So that’s the thing. Data with no context is literally just numbers, right? The whole idea is we want to add contextual information to that data so that our IT layer can understand it. That’s literally bridging the gap. Guys, it’s not that difficult. All right, so how does Ignition bridge this gap?

14:42
Laura
It solves this challenge by seamlessly integrating the OT and the IT layer on an open platform based on IT standards. Right? Ignition can talk to PLCs on the OT layer just as easily as it can talk to SQL databases in the IT layer. And it also makes it very easy to access all of the data. It doesn’t matter where IT is anywhere in the enterprise. And putting it, well, adding it all together one platform. So Ignition, like I mentioned, is one universal application platform. Not universal, I apologise. Industrial application platform for skaters, HMIs, IoT solutions, and so much more. IT doesn’t only do everything that you’d expect from a world class skater, but it also lets you connect, design and deploy without any type of limits. You probably would have heard of Ignition being the unlimited SCADA platform, right?

15:39
Laura
So Ignition can provide one central hub for everything on the plant floor. And you can create any type of industrial application you can instantly web deploy to desktops, industrial displays and mobile devices. And also, Ignition’s unlimited licensing lets you add as many clients, tags, projects, connections, devices, whatever it might be for one affordable price. And it also has industrial strengths and secure strength. Sure. Stability. Never seen software fighting someone. Stability and security, Right. And then also it is cross compatible. It runs on Mac OS, it runs on Linux, and it runs on Windows. And I would say the best capability of Ignition, being future proof, is its server client architecture, the scalable server client architecture, because it allows you to add and remove from your current architecture with no downtime, and also allows you to scale exponentially and also downscale as well.

16:42
Laura
There’s no limit to that as well. All of this, everything you see is web based, web launched and web managed. It runs on all of the fancy modern browsers that we have today. And its modular configuration lets you add your desired functionality to your platform as you go along. Ignition helps companies solve their data problems. Yes, Laura, you said that like probably 10 times in this presentation. But let’s take a look at the overall image that I’m trying to give through to you guys here. The democratisation of data helps you to digitally transform your processes to be a lot more efficient. So when we look at this whole picture, it’s important to understand every single part, all of that makes up a whole, right. Of what your organization needs to transform from a traditional model to a modern set of technologies.

17:39
Laura
So there’s five areas here. The first one is collection. Let’s quickly go through them. Now collection is obviously where you collect your data from and how you collect it. And of course, if it’s on the platform, in the field, in the cloud, it doesn’t matter. It starts with data collection. Then we go to data modelling. So that is where you structure your data in a unified way so that it’s understandable by every single business layer in your enterprise. Then your data needs to be accessible by any type of business application, specifically in an open and secure format, right. That uses strong security that usually falls under publication and subscription. And then after that data is available, an organization usually needs to be able to access it, to see it, to explore it.

18:31
Laura
Now, data is turned into insights and action when we create or connect any type of industrial or business application. And then lastly, in today’s world, data means absolutely nothing to us if we don’t have any valuable insight on what can be garnered through either analytics and, yes, machine learning. If you call me and tell me you want AI, I’m gonna laugh at you. If you tell me you want machine learning, I’m gonna laugh at you. Not because it’s Funny, but because what even does that mean? Right? If you tell me you want AI, what is, what does it mean? I’m laughing because I also do not know. Right? Okay, but we’ll get there. I’ll explain to you really quickly what we refer to when we speak about machine learning in Ignition specifically. So, first thing, data collection. We’re going to start with that.

19:26
Laura
That is still a massive challenge for a lot of industrial companies today. Now, to solve this data challenge, Ignition leverages open standards and modern technology so that it can act as a hub for everything on your plant floor. On the on prem level, it can connect to virtually any type of PLC with its native drivers and also through OPC, Ignition also supports all major SQL databases, time series historians like Canary that you’ll hear about a bit later today, and then other MES systems and ERP systems. So it can collect data from business systems too. That means things like SAP and Ignition can also collect data from the edge of node using Edge, well, edge of network apologies, using its lightweight version called Ignition Edge.

20:15
Laura
And then Ignition can also connect to any type of cloud services like Azure or AWS to kind of leverage their fancy tools. But we’ll get to that in the last stage. But Ignition does a lot more than just aggregate and collect data. It can allow you to create powerful and industrial applications and pretty much deploy them everywhere. Right? So after we’re collecting the data, this is now when we have to start modelling it. We have to build a unified naming structure. Now, a few devices and Edge systems actually do support properties data modelling, but not all of them do either. Or you can still create a UNS inside of Ignition or you can just define your own. Now, to do that, Ignition uses Spark Plug. Who of you guys have heard of Spark Plug? Few hands. Why? You’re like, oh my goodness, Spark Black.

21:15
Laura
Yes, Spark Black, right? You build a UNS unit using anything else, you tell me how it goes, right? So Ignition uses Spark Plug and it lays the foundation for data management. And Spark Plug is pretty much just a specification that defines how MQTT can be used in a mission critical or, you know, time sensitive environment. It creates data definitions, stack standards, and it develops a workflow structure usually for your databases as well. It does not change the underlying of how MQTT is, you know, transported at all. So Spark Plug usually establishes a single source of truth. That’s the idea for your models or your tags at the origin. And it can dramatically reduce the amount of work necessary to create your robust systems because you are essentially creating Parametrised data templates. So great.

22:13
Laura
Now we’ve got data modelling, we’ve got a UNS, whatever you might have built. Now of course, you want to be able to access that data. It’s important to have an architecture that can scale and it doesn’t require a one-to-one link from your application to your devices. Right? So MQTT’s Spark publish and subscribe model, of course that is the ideal solution for working with your OT data. Now Ignition does, it does use MQTT, that’s an additional add on that you can add to your platform. But it’s pretty much just the leading protocol for working with IoT architectures. And MQTT was designed to specifically meet the demands of the industrial control systems that we’re working with today. It’s extremely lightweight, it’s bidirectional, it’s stateful, and it is secured with TLS technology as well.

23:09
Laura
So to make the best use of MQTT Ignition or Inductive Automation that partners with SiriusLink Solutions, which has years of developing top quality IoT solutions using MQTT and with software modules that allows you to transmit the data from field devices with MQTT up into launching an MQTT server that might be in the cloud or that might be local and then connecting that data to your industrial and business applications. You can do all of that by adding the serious link modules to your Ignition platform. Right? So just quickly the MQTT is leveraged to easily push data from thousands, hundreds, one, whatever you might have in your architecture from all of those plant floor devices, from numerous sites, all up until one single platform.

24:05
Laura
And then of course you can connect your different types of applications to it, either business or industrial and then of course harness the power of MQTT to access that data. So, so because MQTT does use a publish and subscribe protocol, you just subscribe to whatever data you need and then you’ll have access to it instantly. And using MQTT technology, Ignition allows you to get that valuable data from places where it’s kind of in a data silo into the hands of the people that actually need it. Right. So quick example here. Some of you guys might have seen all of the architectures that there is to see.

24:44
Laura
Some of you, this might be a new one, but this is a very nice example of how you can use MQTT from the plant floor, push it through a platform all the way up into the cloud, right? So the idea is here, if you take a look at the top left side, it can be, we can collect data through MQTT from PLC or RTUS, MQTT enabled PLCs, MQTT enabled field devices on Edge Gateway, which is Ignition Age or an MQTT enabled device, and then push it through to our Ignition server. We do that by the use of the MQTT distributor model module and then we host the broker here in the MQTT with the MQTT engine on our Ignition platform. And then you can actually just push that data through a cloud.

25:38
Laura
Well, a cloud data injector, which can be anything from AWS to Azure to Google, IBM. There’s quite a few options that you can choose from, right? So just as important as it is to collect your data, obviously the most important thing is what do you do to empower the use of your data and to use it for your processes. So this is another area where Ignition really shines. Ignition has a robust set of development tools and it allows you to create any type of industrial application that would fit your need, right? Ignition is a super powered platform and allows you to build any type of application like scalars and HMIs. Like I mentioned, you can collect your data, right? You can rapidly develop any kind of application and then web launch it to all of the different devices.

26:31
Laura
It has powerful built-in tools that you can use to fully create any IoT or SCADA system. And then it’s modular, right? So you can add the functionalities or even remove them if you know, for any type of need that you have. Might it be alarming reporting data streaming and so on. Then because of Ignition’s interoperability, it’s possible to connect to virtually any type of business application and then subscribe and publish the data to the rest of the company. And that includes things like connecting to ERP, CRMs and so on. So Ignition comes with everything that you need to create these applications. And the. You might have heard of the Ignition designer. So that’s just a development environment, right? It combines a rich component library; it’s got powerful tools for drawing.

27:26
Laura
You guys might have heard of ignition 8.3 with the new perspective drawing tools that are included in that. And you can also do a lot of scripting all in one place. You don’t really need to know how to code if you start with simple projects, but it’s very easy, you know, to start coding inside of Ignition because there’s so many examples in user manuals and forums that would help you with the process and also training, but we’ll get there. It includes an easy drag and drop design that allows you to quickly build applications. You can also rapidly build and customize large projects, create your own graphics and animations, and then of course, these designer environments are completely free and it’s unlimited as well. Cool. So lastly, because again, Ignition is so interoperable, companies can leverage the best type of analytics and machine learning tools.

28:23
Laura
Yep. To get a deeper understanding of your OT data. Right. So analytical, sure. Analytics is very, very important because that’s literally the whole idea. Right. To get real value from your data. So while being able to collect it, to gather it, to model it, to add context, all of that is great. But we actually want to get value out of it. So we need to give it good insight and we need to visualise it as well. So Ignition does have built in visualisation tools and also it does have some built in machine learning algorithms. And if that is not your fancy, you can use some existing MLS, import it and configure it as you wish. Right. So let’s take a look at the Ignition ecosystem really quickly. Last few slides don’t die on me here. Right. Need a bit of energy. Okay.

29:21
Laura
So Ignition is largely successful because of its ecosystem. Right. That means it’s not just Ignition. There’s so much more that comes along with this platform. We have a onboard program where Ignition and Ignition Edge comes pre installed with OEM devices that you can purchase. Inductive Automation Strategic Partner program. Right. Provides modules that gives you some specific domain experience, expertise that allows you to integrate very specific, you know, capabilities. That’s for example, the MQTT through Cirrus Link or MES functionality through Sepasoft. And then we have the third party modules, module developers. So those are the guys that’s building with Ignition using the completely free SDK packages and that allows them to transfer their knowledge into these modules that they usually make available to the community as well. We’ve got some. I don’t think he’s here though. We’ve got someone that built a few cool modules.

30:26
Laura
I don’t know if I can actually tell you guys yet because he’s still busy with it, but there’s a lot of AI inside of the modules and he also actually built a Chat GPT Ignition Wizard. For those of you guys who are interested, just Google it. Chat GPT Ignition Wizard. You’ll find it very cool. Right. And then we also have Ignition Exchange. This provides users, or just a group of users, access to the largest collection of Ignition resources that people inside of the Ignition community across the whole world contributed to. Right.

30:58
Laura
And made freely available to their users and then lastly we also have training so the inductive university is the online training that’s free to provide training on the product and then there’s also in person training where we actually work through the product how to create a project and it provides certification on the product as well but this would not be a Jaco approved presentation right if I didn’t mention that literally all of this is built around the customer right?

31:32
Laura
The idea is that we empower you, the customers, the SIS, whoever it might be our partners with the tools to be successful so Ignition is supported by this entire ecosystem of industrial organisations integrators, manufacturers, distributors, coders whatever it might be and the whole idea is to give you the capability to build what you want so take away from this that it’s just important to understand that digital transformation STR starts as a foundation with a robust and modern SCADA system. Cool. I’m not going to say digital transformation anymore, so thank you.