ThingWorx Experience?

jgreenewv · Sep 23, 2016

After a nearly yearlong effort to get some kind of data collection/SCADA application in the plant (including multiple meetings with Rockwell and Inductive Automation) efforts just ground to a halt because our IT folks just found out we had a license for ThingWorx sitting on the shelf as part of our support contract for other PTC software. So, after wading through all of the buzzwords, I still can't get a feel for how useful this will be. Does anyone have firsthand experience that can tell me what kind of wonderland or nightmare we're preparing to wade into?

diat150 · Sep 23, 2016

Im not sure either. I tried to find out more about it but they wouldnt tell me how much it costs, how to program it, and said the only way I could get a trial was to pay to go to their training.

Weirdest sales pitch ever. Business must be good as hell to pitch your product like that to a potential customer.

jgreenewv · Sep 26, 2016

We sat through the "sales" presentation Friday that included the announcement that we had a limited license already, but the presentation itself was all buzzwords and bragging with very little substance. The two minutes they demonstrated creating a "mashup" (As far as I can tell, their term for a display project. I really don't like buzzwords, by the way) didn't look groundbreaking. They were explaining that this shows how easy their product is, but the data points were already defined, and they used a WYSIWYG editor to drop graphical "widgets" onto the screen. You know, like pretty much every other SCADA application in existence. When the topic of expansion costs was mentioned, that got pushed to a future conversation. It just did not give me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

cjd1965 · Sep 26, 2016

I wonder what 'limited' means..is that tags/pages?

jgreenewv · Sep 26, 2016

From what they told us, to "increase sales" they had included a server license + 50 "asset" licenses to our support contract a couple years back. Based on the presentation, I understand an "asset" to be one machine/line/controller, but again, little technical info to evaluate leaves this a little fuzzy.

jgreenewv · Oct 26, 2016

Just to update folks who may look at this thread, we've managed to extract the following information from PTC:

1. Here's list pricing, and we can't get you final pricing until we negotiate a contract with you.
2. Licensing required one server license, and some quantity of "user" licenses. Users can be either persons doing data retrieval and analysis, monitoring, etc. or can be a fixed display somewhere. Essentially, if it accesses ThingWorx, it's a "user."
3. It is a yearly subscription, at least from the "user" licensing side of things. Our IT folks are still clarifying on the server side.

At least based on the list pricing we've seen, this is not an insubstantial amount of money. Unfortunately for us, our IT group discovered it, so it's likely what we'll be using in the end.

diat150 · Oct 26, 2016

are you able to post the list pricing?

jgreenewv · Oct 26, 2016

diat150 said:
are you able to post the list pricing?

Good question, as it's list pricing, I don't see why not.

As I said, they confirmed the user costs were on a yearly subscription, not sure about the server cost yet. I'm also not entirely certain how you multiply unlimited by 150.

diat150 · Oct 26, 2016

haha. that is crazy.

jgreenewv · Dec 6, 2016

Another update, in case anyone is following along. We have a group in today to talk nuts and bolts + cost. The majority of the technical side is, if it's standard, you just drag and drop. If it's not standard, prepare to write JavaScript to make it happen. I've been in a conference room for 35 minutes now with our "expert" and one of their technical guys trying to pull data by hour into a chart.

Management is in another room discussing the money side. I can't wait to get the debriefing from that meeting.

ganutenator · Dec 6, 2016

jgreenewv said:
Good question, as it's list pricing, I don't see why not.

As I said, they confirmed the user costs were on a yearly subscription, not sure about the server cost yet. I'm also not entirely certain how you multiply unlimited by 150.

I'm guessing each additional over 1000 eachish, or eachily.

ganutenator · Dec 6, 2016

Apparently AB has figured out that telling Engineers they can't have something has been working. Some genius salesman modeled after hot chick rejection or something, I heard.

ganutenator · Dec 6, 2016

I feel sorry for some of the salesman that have to try and sell to me.

It's the one time I can take my frustrations out.

I have to be nice to stupid employees, stupid customers, buggy software, all darn day.

Salesman: Can I stop by, I have some new product to show you.
me: Ok, but if you hand me another ethernet or vfd brochure, I'm kicking you out.
Salesman: ok

Not 1 minute into his visit, guess what I got?

Out, no but but but, get the **** out!

jgreenewv · Dec 8, 2016

My biggest aggravation with this entire thing is, IT has essentially decided that we're using ThingWorx, but won't explicitly say that. The closest they've come is "We have a relationship with PTC, and will fully support this product. If you select something else, you may be on your own." But, even though we're 99% for sure going with ThingWorx, I still have to sit through multiple presentations trying to sell me on it, keeping in mind that I have essentially no input in the selection process other than providing my opinion. Such a time suck.

ThingWorx Experience?

jgreenewv

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