WinCC upgrade or TIA Portal? Confused

Morning

I’ve been asked to look at upgrading an existing redundant WinCC install, the customer is worried about the age of the servers and wants to upgrade to latest versions etc.
I freely admit that I have not worked on WinCC, Citect and Ignition are my staple.
I spoke to a very helpful guy at Siemens technical support about this but I remain slightly confused and I’m hoping someone can steer me the right way. My confusion is mostly around the differences between WinCC and TIA Portal, TIA Portal seems to be a mash of software bolted together (unfair perhaps), the web sites are helpful but not so much for upgrading.
This is what I’ve understood:
At present the WinCC is version 6.2 SP3, the latest version of WinCC is 7.3 (2013?) and it’s a simple upgrade, just load in the project and run. I can request and pay for a simple licence upgrade.
TIA Portal is currently version 13? But the upgrade is not simple (I don’t know the scope of “not simple”) and new licences are required.
Does that sound right?
I’d like to report back honestly with some realistic costs, If WinCC stopped being produced as a standalone product in 2103 then that’s important info.
I have an Ignition system in another of this customer’s locations and they like it more than the WinCC, so I’ve been asked to offer that as well but it’s a complete rewrite and so probably not cost effective.


Cheers, Chris

Depends on your needs.
If the WinCC is a single station with a limited amount of tags, you could go to TIA portal. But it isn't a simple migration.
If the WinCC is client-server or it has more than a few thousand tags, upgrade to WinCC 7.3.

TIA Portal was meant to be one unified software package to combine PLC and HMI/Scada engineering. It's not there yet. And for larger Scada solutions, it won't be for several years to come.

To respond in a simple way:
WinCC is a SCADA.
TIA Portal is a programming software for Siemens PLCs, similar to the "old" step 7.

(the TIA also allows you to program HMI and similar to the old Pro Tool and as such you can use it to run a VERY VERY LIMITED SCADA - which I wouldn't subscribe...)

Don't forget that if you are to upgrade the WinCC you will need also a development key.


Best of luck
MifPT

Jeebs, MifPT

Thanks for the replies, seems TIA is not what's needed, the existing system is redundant, up-to 25 concurrent clients with around 30K tags plus trending tags.

Do you know when the latest version of WinCC was released? was it 2013, is it still in development? or are all efforts directed to TIA

thanks

If you are not used to Siemens, I would recommend Wincc 7.3

It is not discontinued, and as Jeebs said It will take a while... Also an important note on that is that already you can convert standalone WinCC to TIA WinCC (but not great) so if they discontinue it, they will make a good converter at that point for sure, so no worries for your customer.

MifPT said:

To respond in a simple way:
WinCC is a SCADA.
TIA Portal is a programming software for Siemens PLCs, similar to the "old" step 7.

(the TIA also allows you to program HMI and similar to the old Pro Tool and as such you can use it to run a VERY VERY LIMITED SCADA - which I wouldn't subscribe...)

Don't forget that if you are to upgrade the WinCC you will need also a development key.


Best of luck
MifPT

Click to expand...

TIA has some naming problems...
To many people think TIA is TIA, when actually it is 5 softwares (+ drives and more):

TIA Step7 Basic - programming plc - s7 1200
TIA Step7 Professional -programming plc - s7 1500, s7 300, s7 400
TIA WinCC Basic - HMI:Basic panels
TIA WinCC Confort - HMI:all panels + pc ("VERY VERY LIMITED SCADA")
TIA WinCC Professional - SCADA - normal SCADA, but still not full blown compared to standalone WINCC, it has the same functionality of a clean WinCC, but doesn't have support for any add-ons or options (redundency for example..)

Chris Taylor said:

Jeebs, MifPT

Thanks for the replies, seems TIA is not what's needed, the existing system is redundant, up-to 25 concurrent clients with around 30K tags plus trending tags.

Do you know when the latest version of WinCC was released? was it 2013, is it still in development? or are all efforts directed to TIA

thanks

Click to expand...

You replied when I was writing...

WinCC it is for you... And don't worry about discontuination.. It is still in paralel development with TIA, it is just a goal to integrate it in the future. So if anything when it will reach the same functionality, it will be easily convertable to TIA V16 or V17 maybe

Just got some prices back from Siemens, not too bad for upgrades, however £250 for a 14 day trial of step7, Outstanding! Knocking on Rockwells door

Chris Taylor said:

Just got some prices back from Siemens, not too bad for upgrades, however £250 for a 14 day trial of step7, Outstanding! Knocking on Rockwells door

Click to expand...

Just for you guys to know, there is also a possibility to buy a combo licence.

This combo licence allows running STEP 7 and TIA to program the new PLCs.

Whilst there is migration route between WinCC 6.2 and WinCC 7.3 the structure of the two packages are quite different and the migration may not go as smoothly as you might imagine. We deployed WinCC 7.3 on a new machine as recently as last year.

Nick

Manglemender said:

Whilst there is migration route between WinCC 6.2 and WinCC 7.3 the structure of the two packages are quite different and the migration may not go as smoothly as you might imagine. We deployed WinCC 7.3 on a new machine as recently as last year.

Nick

Click to expand...

Nick

I'm beginning to believe this, I've done some reading and there are a number of pitfalls, also I can't get a clear answer from Siemens as to whether Windows 10 is compatible and what the right specs are for this install.

I don't know of any products that Siemens currently supports on Win10. I've heard that the next version of most of the packages will, however, whenever they come out. If you're using the WinCC 7.3 station as a server, however, they typically recommend that it has Windows Server instead of a user operating system.