Wonder Ware Pricing Structure

I'm working on a project to provide plant-wide production displays (OEE and that sort of stuff). Originally the plan was to use Inductive Automation's SQL Bridge to store data (both current and historical) in a MSSQL database. I've got that much done for a number of machines: Really quite painless to do. I was going to serve display's up by IIS (developed in ASP.NET) However, due to the technical abilities and lack of human resources in our other facilities I'm thinking the drag and drop features of a visual package may be in order. My personal preference would be the full Ignition system. However others seem to prefer Wonderware.

Can anyone give me an idea on WW's pricing structure on their server based package (Historian?) I know they charge by the tag. But also by the client? Do clients need to have any WW specific s/w installed? How easy is it to update projects?

Hard to say how many tags we'd need but better than 1000 for sure. The client count could easily go up quickly: 10 just to start. Probably a lot more later.

Thanks

I cant give you a specific number, but its going to cost alot. way more than the full ignition package and it isnt even close(my guess would be at minimum 6 times the cost of igntion).

I know you pay by the tag and by the client with wonderware, so keep in mind future expansion.

The SCADA packages cost in the same ballpark as Rockwell's+15% or so.(Based on the last time I purchased some) You may be able to leverage an agreement w/ them however.

The historian, I don't have costs for.

I've used the regular WW package installed on a single PC. Worked OK but for the life of me I can't figure out why people think it's intuitive. Changing groups of objects' properties all at once didn't seem possible. But it certainly did the job.

Question is, how does their product (not even sure of the correct name anymore) that handles the client/server model do?

I recently attended ClearSCADA training. It seems like a good product. You can download a full running demo.

@WildKurt - did you ever find pricing info from Wonderware for 10 client licenses, 1000 tags, and the historian? Just curious.

The full "Works" Ignition package with everything (reporting/historian/visualization/development environment) would run you $9500 - I bet they could give you a bit of a break since you already have the SQLBridge module, though.

WW product and pricing structure is amazingly complicated. The only way to get a price is to have them quote one and I suspect what you pay depends on how far they have to drop to be competitive with others.

Wonderware licencing scheme is pretty complicated and overpriced. First of all, you will have to purchase a Historial Server Licence, a WW run-time licence (either classic or TSE) and historian client licences.

The historian client licenses have to be checked out and can be per device name or per user name (device name = single computer/node license) (user name = based on the windows user name).

And that is only to be able to access the historical client applications (trends, etc).

If you do not successfully check out a historian client licence, your trend will turn to 'demo' mode in a few seconds after pulling it up on your application.

You can check this PDF out, it might help you understand and choose the licences you need for your system.

http://www.multinvest2005.ro/wonderware/Wonderware_Dev_Studio.pdf

However, I like your original idea of Ignition. By the way all you would have to do is run a script in wonderware to launch the ignition client in a window and just have the 'close' or 'done' button close the application and your back to wonderware. See? we all CAN get along! (plus no-one would even notice, just the customer with that extra cash in his pocket)

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned here regarding Wonderware is the redundancy features it has built in. I have not used Ignition or Indusoft so I can't speak to what they can offer so keep that in mind.
However, with Wonderware it acts like a server based system except for the fact that it doesn't necessarily require server access to continue updating, running, trending, etc. It also has redundant fail over that can be set up in a way that the operators won't even notice.

This obviously depends on your application as to the value that this provides. For some instances these type of features are very valuable, others not so much. I will say that WW can get extremely expensive if you are deploying lots of nodes. If I remember correctly just the run time version for nodes with cost you about $1500 a pop which doesn't include the development studio, historian etc. which aren't cheap; ie: more expensive than the runtime licenses.

Please, please don't make a decision on a SCADA system based of the cost of licensing alone.

A few years ago, I did an analysis of our system, as we were in need of updating and moving into "the future".

I compared DeltaV DCS, Rockwell, and Wonderware.

We finally decided on Wonderware due to the future savings (ROI). The engineering of the system to get us up and working took around a year and a half for the complete conversion and validation. We effectively went live on 01-Jan-2011. Since that time, the cost savings alone for the changes, additions, and maintenance has been greater than the extensive licensing we have.

Moral of the story, do an analysis of your requirements vs the SCADA system. Do include licensing, but it shouldn't be the lone decider.

Good point! The most important thing is to gather, understand, and formalize all of your requirements. This necessarily includes maintenance into the future.

@Oakley - sounds like a huge project. Did you integrate multiple sites together?

Oakley said:

Please, please don't make a decision on a SCADA system based of the cost of licensing alone.

A few years ago, I did an analysis of our system, as we were in need of updating and moving into "the future".

I compared DeltaV DCS, Rockwell, and Wonderware.

We finally decided on Wonderware due to the future savings (ROI). The engineering of the system to get us up and working took around a year and a half for the complete conversion and validation. We effectively went live on 01-Jan-2011. Since that time, the cost savings alone for the changes, additions, and maintenance has been greater than the extensive licensing we have.

Moral of the story, do an analysis of your requirements vs the SCADA system. Do include licensing, but it shouldn't be the lone decider.

Click to expand...

Our system is considered small (as indicated by Wonderware Corporate Engineers). We have 2 Redundant AOS nodes that also provide redundant communications to 49 PLC's. We also have WW Historian, and 15 InTouch HMI clients. Supporting this is a Galaxy Repository Node, and a WW Information Server node.

Now, since I am in a regulated environment, we are not allowed to make changes to the production system without having gone through testing and validation. So, we have an equivalent QA system consisting of 2 Redundant AOS nodes with redundant communications to a variation of PLC's (not 49, but all can be modeled), a WW Historian, and 1 InTouch HMI client. Again, supporting this is a Galaxy Repository Node, and a WW Information Server node.

In order for our developers to access this (these) system are 2 Development clients, and another 2 for the system administrators.

So that is the configuration. After the conversion, we have 6000 Objects served up from the AOS nodes. These objects support approximately 12000 physical IO devices. The 49 PLC's monitor/control the utilities to the entire campus (approximately 5 square miles).

And, yes, it was a large undertaking. Got the system completely engineered and validated in a year and a half. With all the rigor put into the engineering and validation, the deployment to the production was seamless to the operations staff.

Very cool. Do you have enough maintenance (or scope changes) to justify continued work in the development environment? What do the admins need with the development boxes? Are you integrated with Windows domains or another form of corporate network? Does IT maintain the servers - I assume it runs on SQL Server.

4 of our production servers (and 4 of the QA servers) have SQL Server.

Our entire environment is on a private network. We do have a bridge that allows connection only with select credentials. If a network threat is detected, the bridge is lifted and we become totally isolated.

We authenticate via Windows Active Directory. If we do become isolated, or servers retain credentials allowing for authentication (if the individual has been authenticated prior to the bridge being lifted).


We have 2 dedicated Admin Development boxes only because these are laptops that the Admins have assigned to them. This way, the Admins can connect remotely for any issues that arise. And we have the system set up that only Admin credentials have universal access. The other 2 development engineering workstations are desktop workstations that have to be scheduled in advance (as a business process).