All engineers and integrators: Let's say you have a new project on the horizon. You will be creating a brand new HMI/SCADA software deployment and your client/boss wants your recommendation. Do you just recommend the same software you always use because you are familiar with it? How much time do you really spend testing new software from different vendors to see if you can find something better?

Or, let's say you are a manager or executive in charge of managing the project. Do you take time to research new software? Do you just take your engineers' suggestions?

What criteria do you use to determine which software will be best for your application?

The practice should be that you need to be ever researching, rather than have things determined for you.

Hello Rich, Usually I prefer a brand´s software that i ´m familiarized with it. I wasted much time testing and investing about the many ways to do the same...

Thanks Lottie. I agree!

And thanks Daniel. I think a lot of people feel that way. I know when my company released our new product this year, we had all kinds of interest from our customers using our older product; less from new customers.

It can be such an important decision that affects so many people, I can understand why you want to have confidence and know what you're getting yourself into. At the same time, there are some new technologies available and new ideas about continuous optimization in automation.

Maybe it's smart for companies with new products to focus on younger engineers and integrators just entering the workforce. That way they are not competing against brand loyalty and fear of change. I don't know.

I appreciate the feedback.

I totally agree with you Rich, besides brand loyalty Engineers are looking for user friendly products to avoid time of familizing with the new brands. An experience I have had is to work with the Danfoss variable speed drives as compared to these others. This is because they are easy to progam and understand. Hence the adage "better the devil you know than the angel you don't. "

Hi Rick,

We develop SCADA Frameworks, not so much on the integrator side, and there is a lot to get up to date with. Our time is equally divided by delivering projects and researching market/technology.

But have some feeling that the renewal in SCADA SW market is very slow. Estimate EOL of a SCADA SW is 5-15y depending in factors from functionallity, maintenance costs and obsolete systems.

Some major changes in the technology side - Service oriented SCADA´s, APIs conected rather than Protocol conected, distributed DA and A&E Systems, TSDB Hystorians, User customizable HMI´s and obviously a break from server-client to a intranet-cloud/secure-cloud webserver.

These new concepts will be delivered as SCADA Systems in the next few years, but you may use safelly the same SCADA SW you are used to. There is not enough market traction to pull these features into market yet, for the majority of the vendors.

Just don´t be afraid from change, it may come from your friendly SCADA vendor ;)

My guess is that market leaders will bring these features first, setting the requirements for projects higher in the next 5-10ys.

Regards,

In my position, I get the opportunity to work with numerous types of SCADA/HMI software. For the most part, deciding which software to use is up to the client, and it seems they always decide to use what they are comfortable with. There are pros and cons to every SCADA software package. I guess it always comes down to whatever meets the client's needs is selected.