SCADA: Indusoft Web Studio

[bitmonkey]

Anyone out there using Indusoft Web Studio? (I see it is recommended by Automation Direct.) We are a small company and the owner is interested in getting more production data on the network. I'm looking for recommendations on SCADA software that's not too expensive. Thanks!

 

[OkiePC]

I have one customer using it. The software seems fine, that particular implementation happens to be horrible. I had to move it to a new computer a few years ago and needed some support which I found to be top notch. Now that they've been swallowed up by Schneider that might change.

We have a bunch of customers using DAQFactory. That software is extremely inexpensive and powerful but not really good when the tag count gets high unless you buy a separate OPC server. The mad scientist who designed most of the DAQFactory apps I have to support made some things that are very cool, but also very complex under the hood.

We use Ignition where possible. Most of our water customers do just fine with a limited edition (single client) with the required modules which is probably still more expensive than those two, but Ignition is very easy to support and has been highly reliable.

 

[Ken Roach]

My company uses IWS almost exclusively. We had been largely an RSView/FTView shop, but had a manager come in with IWS experience and he got the rest of us experienced enough to use and like it.

We use it for small (300-tag) to medium (8000 tag) systems. We've had some glitches, but no more than most products. I cringe when I have to go back to PanelView Plus for anything.

While I would prefer to use Ignition, the Java dependence and incompatibility with C-Python libraries makes it unsuitable for us. We have a huge amount of Python skill in the company, but it relies on libraries for which Jython equivalents just don't exist.

IWS's use of VBScript is a decade out of fashion, but it's simple and powerful enough that most of our guys can make it do what they want.

The acquisition by Schneider was alarming to me; the local Wonderware office periodically pokes their nose into our projects, trying to convince the end customer to buy licenses from them at 2x the cost. So far we've been able to stick with our OEM sales rep at Indusoft.