Price

Markets tend to accept prices they consider to be ‘fair’, which is generally when all the suppliers’ prices are roughly comparable. But every once in a while a new disruptive technology comes along and realigns performance capabilities – and therefore price expectations. 

There are numerous examples of this in the consumer world, where goods once the preserve of the well-heeled and/or professional users are ‘reinvented’ for mass participation, such as the advent of digital cameras and hi-fi stereo systems. A similar technology shift is now happening with SCADA control technology.

Movicon is the first and only SCADA/HMI platform completely based on XML and web services technologies such as Vista XP, CE and Windows 7. As such it provides seamless connectivity to other systems and technologies, including enterprise IT networks, augmented reality, animation, 3D graphics, cloud computing, Industry 4.0 plus the internet and the Industrial Internet of Things.

This ground breaking technology shift means Movicon provides many advances over legacy SCADA. Two specific advantages are the implementation of an “open database” enabling the user to specify the form of data storage e.g. SQL, mySQL, etc. and secondly the inclusion of a full report generator, negating the need for a separate add-on historian or reporting package, which if procured as separate items could cost thousands of pound each.

All of this makes systems configuration infinitely easier and quicker than with any comparable product, while allowing additional features and capabilities to be freely integrated with the SCADA network. Thus a future proof bespoke system design can be developed and constructed with building-block simplicity and which is easily adapted and expanded at later dates when system requirements change.

Significantly Movicon is so adaptable that it can be used equally successfully for the smallest local control requirements or for plant-wide systems that integrate many functions and capabilities.

Movicon has been developed in Italy by Progea, which has used its generations of experience in control engineering to create a SCADA automation platform that is truly flexible so that users can constantly re-developed their production and control capabilities to keep pace with the latest database and software protocols without incurring significant costs.