What is the best solution for network based remote access to industrial automation systems?  Does anyone have experience in this area?

I've noticed a solution from eWON (www.ewon.biz) that looks interesting, does anyone have experience applying this product?

Provide either of the following two as follows:

1. A PC based OPC compliant Gateway, connected to the Communication link, [Optical fiber/ OPGW or over VSAT or Wireless radio via suitable firewall switch] to share/ display selective data at remote site. Master (at works) replicates the database to a Slave PC. The selection of database depend on different scenarios while executing/ detail engineering .

2. A PLC based data link to Communicate over medium [Optical fiber/ OPGW or over VSAT or Wireless radio via suitable firewall switch] to share/ display the process data.

There is a large variety of products to do remote access to Automation systems. Most HMI system have thin-clients available to do remote login. Siemens Win-CC has an excellent one for example. You should also combine a product like this with a great VPN product so that you can keep your network safe.
On the low end of this topic, Siemens has a great monitoring device called a SITRANS RD500 for letting view instrument data remotely through Ethernet, PSTN, GSM/GPRS. It is simple to use and very cost effective.
Finding the ‘best’ solution is going to be hard since it really depends so much on your full application and what existing products/protocols you have.

Hi

Based on your needs, you can have choice.

I am a system integrator of SCADA , PLC and Drives. I need to have remote access to my clients PC for making minor changes in the software, immediately after start up.

We use Remote acess facility in Windows 7 as well as Team Viewer for these short term needs.

With this, I can have acess to my client's desktop and I can implement changes.

Hope the above helps

We use a hardware Raritan solution. Our main servers kvm are connected to a switch that then converts the KVM to Ethernet which is plugged into the corporate LAN. It means we can access all of our servers from our corporate laptops and from home via VPN. Whats nice about the solution is because the only connection between the automation servers and corporate is KVM then there is no danger of virus etc being transferred to the automation network. The down side is you can do file transfers to your PC via this system

If all you are after is access to IP addresses on a remote LAN (PLC, PC, touchscreen, drives, cameras), a simple router with built in VPN capabilities is hard to beat. We've got a number of Linksys RVL200 routers connected to customer LAN's. They incorporate a SSL VPN so connecting remotely is quite simple. They can be had for less than $300.

We use Windows Remote Desktop when Windows based systems are appropriate. Also for instance, the Fastmatics software package uses a data-only approach with the graphics hosted/created on the remote, or for when multiple users need to connect to a single controller, that's quite a bit faster and less network intensive because it only sends changes in data, in data-rate-managed packets, but netowrks are generally fast enough that the graphically intense Remote Desktop is OK for single user..