Comparing SCADA/HMI Software

I've not recently implemented a SCADA system and I'm looking at a few systems, Wonderware and Iconics being some. Anyone have experience with these systems and can give me some of the advantages and disadvantages? Any publicly available comparison of SCADA systems?

I want to communicate with AB and Siemens PLCs and run on Windows server using VMware. Less than 1,000 tags in a plant and want to do KPI dashboards and HMI on a couple dozen machines.

Thanks,
Dennis

02-11-2014 08:12 AM

Top #2

Lesya Rebrova

02-11-2014 08:12 AM

Dennis, I would like to introduce you a different solution which could be implemented in your case. Our product, IDbox real time monitoring system, is a data acquisition software +monitoring in real time. Besides it processes, calculates, stores and analyse real-time and historical data. This software also allows integration of other data acquisition systems like SCADA.
There is no problem to connect to any type of sensors and PLCs.

Some of our references are Spanish Nuclear plants, E.ON, Iberdrola, Robert Bosch, etc. where IDbox was used for similar projects.

In IDbox site (www.idbox.cic.es) you can see the functional detail, technical documentation, product videos, and also access to online demo.

Also we have documents which compare IDbox system with other similar products in the market if you are interested on them don't hesitate to contact me lrebrova@cic.es

02-11-2014 10:47 AM

Top #3

Christopher Tayler

02-11-2014 10:47 AM

In my experience a product called PC-Vue by Arc Informatique is ideal. I have implemented well over 30 systems ranging from 100-1000000 tags and found it to work very well, all hosted on VMware Virtual infrastructure talking to GE, AB and Siemens based equipment.

I'd be happy to talk to you about my experiences.

02-11-2014 12:58 PM

Top #4

Bob Hines

02-11-2014 12:58 PM

I would suggest you take a look at Inductive Automation's Ignition product: http://www.inductiveautomation.com/

One big reason I like it is it's licensing scheme. Most SCADA packages require licenses for servers and clients and cost increase with the number of tags. Ignition is licensed by the server and cost does not depend on the number of clients nor number of tags.

Clients are zero install. Since Ignition is Java-based, the only software required for a client is a web-browser and a JVM. This means you can use many different types of hardware for your clients, including PCs, thin-clients, Macs, tablets, etc.

Ignition uses a number of open technologies such as Jython (a version of Python implemented on Java). This means that one can leverage a multitude of existing Java and Python libraries.

Ignition is more database-centric than most SCADA packages. It can use any number of database engines as long as there is a JDBC driver for it.

Ignition also has a rich third-party community that develops and sells additional modules for Ignition.

02-11-2014 03:22 PM

Top #5

Craig Balkin

02-11-2014 03:22 PM

I currently work on iFIX and wonderware. iFIX's database manager allows for you to take certain tags off scan for testing of the scada system. I've found this to be very useful tool when testing. Wonderware's daserver I've found to be great for quickly figuring out communications problems or specific problem with specific tags also the system management council helps in troubleshooting any strange errors. Both allow you to edit tags in a CSV format which makes database building very fast. As for your other scada system I'm sorry but I don't know anything about it