Is Iconics better than Wonderware, Citect, Intellution?

Robert,

I didn't personally reinstall the Genesis32 software. Our ENI tech did install and activate it, but didn't realize it was only 30 days. So it ran out.

Guess it is our problem since we didn't inform him about your software's 30 day of-the-wall license.

From a customers point of view... We bought the license, so why should I have to re-up my support to get a software key I already bought? Also, if we have a standby computer (that is turned off until we need it); why do we have to have a separate license? We are only using one computer/license at a time to run our process. If you didn't know everyone needs backups to their backups.

This is where WonderWare will beat you day-in and day-out.

In manufacturing it is all about uptime, not about how many people can steal someone's software. I would gladly pay 3 times more for software that I didn't have to contact support about for a key code.

We are running now. Thanks for your concern.

SM
 
Try contacting them on a holiday or one of their holidays. They have holidays that are a few days out of normal. It isn't 24/7 support like WW.

SM
 
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Nathan Boeger

From a customer's perspective it's good that WW support would give you the benefit of the doubt. That's important with running industrial software where time is money. I'd like to think that all the major vendors are supportive for this type of application - even though it was on you, the customer, for losing your key without a backup, then using on a borrowed/trial key for 30 days without getting yours back, then coming back to the vendor with the time crunch.

As to the comment about it being about uptime not software piracy - sure, but give me a break. Iconics bent over backward to get you support and you didn't take advantage of it. Then they helped you out of your self created tough situation. Vendors offer various combinations of keys, backup/restore methods, hardware keys, free trials, and other options.

As to paying 3 times more for software where you'd have the key - I get the point, but again, give me a break. That comes up time and time again after someone's been burnt. You could have paid 3 times the price - 3 Keys would have been more than sufficient. Or you could have paid a little extra for their support contract. Or you could have Ghosted the hard drive.

I feel your frustration and think that top notch support is important, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Blaming the vendor seems pretty harsh in this case.

I'm glad you're back running.

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Nathan Boeger
http://www.inductiveautomation.com
Total SCADA Freedom
 
Nathan

Maybe I didn't provide enough info. We didn't lose the key. The hard drive failed so we needed a new key. Iconics is a real picky software and if you change anything your SOL.

I do admit 30 days should be enough, but it wasn't.

We ghosted the hard drive.....we even did Norton Livestate (or Backup Recovery as it is named now). The Iconics software looks at everything. It must look at the motherboard or other hardware serial numbers. It has never came up working for us from a backup. If you change any hardware you have to call.

So it is not as easy as you think. It is worse than winXP activation.

We did pay for their support for years. We let it slip this past year.

Wonderware's support could be canceled tomorrow and I could still run the plant because Their backup licenses actually run. Once again, I must say they trust their customers

How did ICONICS help me out? They made me pay support for software I already owned. Imagine if Bill gates charged you support everytime you had to re-install WindowsXP on a failed PC or if you changed the memory in it.

Blaming the vendor is really honest in this case.

You have to admit, We did paid support for software we already legally owned and didn't need support on.
 
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Michael Griffin

In reply to SM: I don't have an opinion on Iconics versus Wonderware, but I can confirm that some software copy protection systems (and not just MS Windows) do look at hardware serial numbers. They typically look at serial numbers in motherboards, hard drives, video cards, and network interfaces. Some schemes don't allow any change at all, while others allow one or two changes. You can't image the drive and restore it on another one, because that's more or less what the copy protection system is trying to prevent.

As for the copy protection scheme in MS Windows, the new scheme used by MS-Windows Vista is much more strict than that used by MS-Windows XP. People are having problems even when they don't update any hardware. Even things like driver updates can trigger a system lock-out. You also have to keep re-validating the software every few months. The real pirates of course have already cracked the system, so it's mainly the honest customers who are having problems.

If you are using copy protected software for any essential function, you need to have a plan for recovering from lock-outs caused by the copy protection system. You might think of it as being another point of failure, just like a hard drive crash.
 
Thanks Michael for your post. I agree about having a backup plan. My point, if a software company wants to have a strict copyright protection plan... then offer 24/7 support.

I have called Microsoft at 3am in the morning for my home computer and got an Activation code for winXP. I didn't have to pay for their support either.

I never have to call Microsoft at my plant, we have a Multi-volume license. We paid next to nothing for the MVL.

My point ...Iconics has always been hesitant and slow about giving us a key over the years.

Just trying to give some insight on what others might face with them. Iconics has cost my plant a good amount of money. So, as soon as we can, we will convert it to Wonderware. I can assure everyone that.

SM
 
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Michael Griffin

In reply to SM: With regards to "Multi-volume license" for MS Windows XP, I assume that refers to a form of what most people called the "corporate license". That is all changing with MS Windows Vista. You will have to network the plant PCs to a special license server in your plant, or connect them via the internet to Microsoft's license server.

Each PC then "phones home" to Microsoft on a regular basis (every few months) to get continued permission to keep running. If it can't reach the license server within a specified period of time, MS Windows Vista goes into a "limited functionality" mode which only enables enough features for you to contact Microsoft to re-activate the license for that PC.

Most people are hooking up to the internet every day, so they won't be aware of their PC "phoning home" to get permission to run. Things can be a bit different for a PC used in a plant though.

Right now there's still a hole in the system provided you use the MS Windows Vista version installed by certain PC OEMs on those OEM PCs (i.e. don't replace it with your bulk license). This was a special feature provided to those PC OEMs by Microsoft with great reluctance. It has been widely reported though that Microsoft wants to discontinue that feature and force everyone to go through the activation/re-activation process in order to close an activation loop hole (which people are taking advantage of by re-flashing their BIOS with OEM codes).

In other words, your software situation is about to get a lot more complicated over the next few years. Don't extrapolate your experiences with XP to Vista.

I can't help you with MMI systems. I agree though that copy protection and license activation methods are important evaluation criteria when selecting software. Those features are not put in there to make your life easier.
 
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Nathan Boeger

That's unfortunate. It's bad when a vendor won't give you, the customer, immediate support in cases like that.

I understand the need for copy protection, but their licensing scheme does seem out of line. If it's that strict they should disclose it and give you a legitimate way to do a backup that works. I'm a fan of hardware keys. The new Vista scheme sounds outrageous too - I thought that of XP already. The redeeming factor is that you can call M$ and read 50 character serial numbers back and forth with their outsourced call centers and they'll re-activate you without question.

I totally agree with you in this case. It's amazing how much small customer service things like this can turn you onto or away from a company. I can think of one credit card company that I love and another that I despise largely due to similar minor acts of really good/bad customer service.

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Nathan Boeger
Inductive Automation
Total SCADA Freedom
 
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Nathan Slider

In Reply to SM: Why Wonderware?? Citect's support is also 24/7 and SCP certified. Hardware dongles too... Any reason as to the preference?

Nathan Slider (CCE v6)
Citect
 
My friends, I work with InTouch, Panorama, Citect, Fix, Monitor Pro, PCVUE and others and for me … I prefer PCVUE. It’s fast, easy, allow internal bits/registers/strings, changes online and redundancy, OPC client/server. If you want, you can develop the mimics on a different computer in the office and just copy the file to the customer computer, without stop the application, so no data is lost. The graphic interface is powerful and intuitive. There are schedulers, formulas, events, recipes, real 3D mimics (not perspective!!!). If you want an alarm window, just drag the object and resize, select number off lines, font, colors and all alarms will be displayed there. The same to logs, events and trends. The limit? Only the hard disk space and the memory. As I say, PCVUE only don’t make baby’s. ;)
 
Assuming you have a sophisticated project requiring detailed programming I advise using a dedicated flatpanel computer loaded with vb.net instead of Wonderware or Iconics. Also you will need an OPC server software package to communicate to things such as a PLC (I recomend INGEAR.com). Vb.net is FREE (NO LICENSE). Iconics' License is not reliable when booting up your computer. Sometimes it doesn't find the License and starts a 2 hour demo instead, which means your application will all of the sudden quit in 2 hours, causing pandemonium in your plant (VERY POOR). I have found Iconics to be very much more difficult than Wonderware, but why bother with these two when you can do anything they can do just using Visual Basic.net? Any engineer will be able to help you using vb.net, and you can surf for snippets of any strange code you may need. If you need help using Wonderware or Iconics, good luck.

Why pay them thousands of dollars?
 
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Nathan Boeger

You will find that writing and SUPPORTING a custom application is a far cry from "downloading random snippets of strange code". An good HMI system will save you significantly more money in man-hours than custom programming. As a PLC/HMI guy, you shouldn't need to worry about: data structures, memory leaks, and the like. Of course you could *theoretically* make a better application with a general purpose language. This is rarely the case unless you're big enough to have a full time programming staff (like Walmart).

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Nathan Boeger
http://notanotherindustrialblog.blogspot.com/
Inductive Automation
 
W
I hate to say this, jimmy, but what you've said is plain silly. The advantage of buying from Wonderware, Citect, Iconics, Proficy (Intellution's new name), or any of the other SCADA/HMI software vendors is that you DON'T have to write it all yourself.

Now this might not be an advantage to you, personally, since you CAN write it.

But what if you are hit by a bus?

Somebody has to come in and clean up your code. If you buy from a vendor, the code is cleaner, commented, and they stand behind it.

Regarding the Iconics issue, that's a dead horse. Iconics has said repeatedly that that doesn't happen any more, if it ever did. If you have that problem, complaining here isn't the answer anyway. Talking to Iconics is the answer (unless of course, you don't have a licensed software copy-- then you need to PAY for it).

Why pay them thousands of dollars? Why not build your own car, your own TV, your own cell phone?

If you're as good as they are at what they do, by all means write some software, hire some coders, hire some marketers, hire some sales people, hire some managers, hire some tech support people, and compete with them.

That all costs money, and reasonable profit aside, that's what you are paying for.

Walt Boyes
Editor in Chief
Control magazine
www.controlglobal.com
blog:Sound OFF!! http://www.controlglobal.com/soundoff
_________________

Putman Media Inc.
555 W. Pierce Rd. Suite 301
Itasca, IL 60143
630-467-1301 x368
[email protected]
 
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Michael Batchelor

As time goes by, this position makes less and less sense in a larger installation. I agree, if you have a small plant without support, then go for the license.

But as automation moves towards more and more centralized control, with more and more involvement with IT and the enterprise business systems, the customization required is beginning to overshadow the advantage to purchasing canned packages. Would I recommend a customer "roll their own" for a two node conveyor system? Not on your life.

But for a system where 6 production lines in one plant and 3 production lines in another plant all have to drop information on the desk of the VP Manufacturing at a headquarters building in a third city, and the IT guys (who really do have development skill) are in the thick of it, the canned packages just get in the way often times.

10 years ago it was cut and dried. 5 years ago it was starting to look cloudy. Today, you really have to evaluate on a case by case basis. The shrinkwrap vendors are working their butts of to stop this trend, and they might succeed and come out with packages that are cut and dried again, but they'll be on the order of SAP or Oracle Financials, not Quickbooks. In the long run, I really see control systems becoming part of the larger information systems in the future. And anyone who has ever been involved in an ERP roll-out can tell you that there is a ton of customization for every business out there. In 10 years, an automation specilist who doesn't know how to read a data definition is going to be like an auto mechanic who doesn't understand electronic ignition. Or like an automation specilist who didn't want to learn 4-20 ma because he didn't see what was wrong with 3-15 psi.

It's coming. We can either get on the bus, or we can get left behind. That part, at least, is cut and dried.

Michael
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Michael Batchelor
www.IndustrialInformatics.com
 
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Nathan Boeger

I agree wholeheartedly that the level of customization and integration is expanding, which necessarily shifts away from a "precanned" approach and more closely resembles general purpose programming. This is the approach that Inductive Automation has been taking for the last 4 years. The big guys are making notable efforts in the "enterprise integration" and "distributed" departments.

I disagree that the market model is moving to resemble SAP or Oracle Financials. Companies are reluctant to shell out huge amounts of money for their control software, especially since we're not sitting in a .COM boom. Nobody has yet come out with a successful Quickbooks style rollout, but that's not to say that it isn't possible or won't happen. It is true that there's a lot of resistance to new brands among integrators and end users. I think eventually control software will be commoditized, but it won't be the same crap that you're used to dealing with. It will be flexible, powerful, and easy to integrate into your enterprise.

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Nathan Boeger
Inductive Automation
"Total SCADA Freedom"
 
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Michael Batchelor

Frankly I do *NOT* think it is possible to do a "quickbooks" style roll out. The variability in manufacturing plants is far more than the differences between the commonly accepted accounting practices used in small accounting systems.

Maybe SAP is to big a generalization on my part, but you are absolutely correct that that control systems are becoming much more like general programming projects. (Let's hope they loose the similarity in the always late and over budget attributes.)

I do think, however, that the days of the canned packages are limited. If the canned packages were the wave of the future, then we would not have seen all of them get bought up into larger umbrellas in the past decade or two. Inductive automation is independent, but where is WW, Factory Link or Intellution.

Maybe the better example is to say that "control packages" of the future will be tools to be subsumed into the IT development environment. The concept of a "control package" with VBA embedded into it will be replaced by the general purpose programming IDE with a control component suite add-in. Think about how companies added "data grid" components to Visual Studio 6.0, and expand on that to become control system components for the Silverlight environment.

It's coming whether we like it or not. We can either get along or get run over.

MB
--
Michael Batchelor
www.IndustrialInformatics.com
 
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Nathan Boeger

Michael,

I agree with your points. I think we're providing two perspectives of mostly similar views.

The "Quickbooks" style thing will NOT work out for pre-canned packages - even in specific industries. This has already proven to fail. Consider works like RS Batch. Fundamentally you're right, there's no "cookie cutter" solution to mass market. However, the part of the "Quickbooks" analogy that I see happening. Standardization and "cookie cuttering" the tricky programmatic aspects is possible - intercommunication, remote access, error handling, a stable platform to run on 24x7, etc. I think general purpose software developers usually don't make efficient industrial application creators, given that they're used to other types of development and not dealing with industrial control. IMO the convergence reinforces the wrench turner's need to be able to put a button on the screen and necessitates the IT guy's need to be able to control remote access to the plant. It may yield a few USB Swiss Army Knife totin' superheros, but I still see the separated specialization. The geek with the debugger and profiler will still be the one hunting out memory leaks. The "team of super-specialists" (SAP approach) gets excessively expensive, especially in terms of maintenance.

The "Future HMI" will certainly have flexibility characteristics of a general purpose IDE, but will necessarily be MUCH SIMPLER. I could see it evolving out of an existing HMI growing in programmability OR a custom version of an IDE that simplifies and specializes for industrial apps.

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Nathan Boeger, MCSE
http://notanotherindustrialblog.blogger.com
 
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Michael Griffin

In reply to Michael Batchelor: I think the market is changing, but it is not so much shifting as diversifying. I think there will always be a demand for small simple MMI packages with limited functionality, but there is also a growing market for production integration into large scale EPR software (e.g. SAP).

If you want a good analogy, consider the relationships between spreadsheets and ERP systems. Most businesses got spreadsheets before they got ERP financial systems, but the ERP hasn't made the spreadsheet obsolete. They both sum up money, but they are used for different purposes.

You speculated about development tools being "subsumed into the IT development environment". If that happens (and it's not unlikely), then these may be implemented as Eclipse plug-ins. Almost all of the large scale proprietary IDE development systems for IT projects that existed at one time have disappeared and been replaced by Eclipse. The vendors just implement their special tools as Eclipse plug-ins which allows you to use whatever combination of tools you need for a project.

I would not be surprised to see complex MMI and SCADA systems follow the same path and become collections of Eclipse plug-ins. This would allow developers to do MMI or SCADA development or ERP integration from within the same IDE and sharing tools between both.

As for embedded VBA going away, it's already gone. VBA is not only officially obsolete, but Microsoft no longer even sells new licenses for it to developers. VBA has been taken out behind the barn, shot, and buried. Anybody who buys a product which depends on it is buying a dead-end product.

Modern ERP and other large scale IT software systems are usually based on Java. An MMI or SCADA system that has aspirations of working closely with ERP systems either needs to be able to share code and libraries with them or else has to reinvent the wheel for every function where they work together. That in turn means that the natural language for these applications is Java, with Javascript for scripting. An MMI/SCADA system that ignores that fact is one that doesn't plan to work well with anything else that matters.

I don't know if this helps anyone trying to decide whether "Iconics (is) better than Wonderware, Citect, Intellution". I do think that people looking at these packages need to step back a bit and ask themselves if they have the full picture. Is the project going to be a stand-alone system, or is there some real prospect of it having to integrate into the business systems? If so, just how will that work? A clunky OPC interface may not be enough. Whatever method is used, I believe that MMI/SCADA systems will have to adapt themselves to the requirements of ERP systems, rather than the other way around.
 
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Nathan Boeger

Michael and Michael,

You both bring up excellent points. My comment about the SAP thing was that there's still software (package/plugin/library/whatever) that automation companies will necessarily provide (as opposed to the idea that general purpose languages alone will create mainstream end user industrial apps).

I'll use FactoryPMI here as an example because it touches on several of your points. FYI, it began life about 5 years ago as a Java IDE, Sun's Bean Builder (although our developers have been using Eclipse the entire time). Several "core" parts necessary were added to make it a usable distributed system: Web server, clustering services, serialization and launch (JWS) support, monitoring/configuration tools, database connection support, user authentication, auditing, etc. These are all things that a user expects to be reasonably "pre-canned" and solid. There are many others that are very useful and make good plugins (graphs, objects, reports, etc.).

There would have to be a substantial plugin set or starting point for the IDE HMI to really take off. (Recall my above post indicated HMIs gaining capability toward IDEs or IDEs getting "dummied down" without loosing too much flexibility). A good Java programmer wielding an Eclipse based HMI with mature industrial plugins could go on to do amazing things. It's my personal opinion that HMI programmers are more on the level of expressions, scripting (FactoryPMI uses Jython - could have easily been JRuby).

In any event, it's hard to contest that SCADA systems ARE getting more complicated and requirements are shifting toward MORE INTEGRATED and distributed systems. And Mike, I couldn't have put it any better:

>MMI/SCADA systems will have to adapt
>themselves to the requirements of ERP
>systems, rather than the other way
>around.

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Nathan Boeger
http://notanotherindustrialblog.blogger.com
 
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