Going ‘All-In’ With Ignition: Insights From Leading Integrators

Speakers

Don Pearson

Chief Strategy Officer

Inductive Automation

Chris Fischer

Integrator Program Manager

Inductive Automation

Scott Whitlock

President/CEO

Flexware Innovation

Evelyn Granizo

Senior Project Engineer

ASE Global

Remus Pop

Partner

Concept Reply US

Chris Taylor

Managing Director

BIJC Limited

When system integrators combine hard work, strong skills, innovative thinking, and the right technology, they can achieve great results. If you’re looking for a technology solution that can help your integration business reach the next level, we invite you to watch our upcoming webinar about system integrators that have fully embraced the Ignition platform by using it for as many projects as possible.

In this webinar, a panel of leading integrators will delve into their journey with Ignition — from first learning about it to making it their application-building platform of choice — and how this journey has helped their teams reach new heights of success. Plus, you’ll gain valuable insights into how they're leveraging Ignition's power across diverse industries.

• Get unique perspectives and insights from leading integrators
• Learn why Ignition is such a versatile platform for industrial automation
• Hear how Ignition changes the game for integrators and their customers
• Discover the advantages of the Inductive Automation Integrator Program

Transcript: 

00:00
Don Pearson: Hello everyone, and thanks for joining us on our webinar today, Going All-in With Ignition Insights From Leading Integrators. My name is Don Pearson with Inductive Automation. Joining me is Chris Fischer, who is the Integrator Program Manager at Inductive Automation. In today's webinar we're going to be focused on system integrators. We've got an excellent panel of integrators with us today, so let's take a minute and meet them. First we have Scott Whitlock. He is the President and CEO of Flexware Innovation. Then there's Evelyn Granizo. Senior Project Engineer at Automation Solutions, Ecuador. Remus Pop, Concept Reply US, and Chris Taylor joining us as Managing Director of BIJC Limited. So that's my introduction, but I'd like to give each a chance to take a few minutes, tell us a little bit about yourselves, a little bit about your company, what you do, what industries you're in maybe, how long you've been in business. That kind of stuff. So with that, let's first start with you, Scott.

01:05
Scott Whitlock: Thanks, Don. Thanks for having us on. My name's Scott Whitlock. I'm the president and founder of Flexware Innovation. We were started in 1996. My background program... My first PLC-5 in 1992 and wrote my first Visual Basic 3 project in probably 1993. So I go way back. Flexware started as an MES-level integrator in 1996 and that's been our focus. But then we also span what we say, shop floor to top floor, so have teams that service all areas of the ISA-95 stack. We have about 220 flex dogs, as we call them. Our team members. We have a couple of physical offices in Indiana, one in Raleigh, North Carolina. And our industries... We're primarily three or four industries: life sciences, including both pharma and med device. We have utilities, we have steel and metals and food and beverage. And then we have a bunch of discreet mixed in there as well. Think of engines and furnaces and things like that. So a little bit about Flexware. Thanks for having us.

02:09
Don Pearson: Thanks so much Scott. Evelyn, how about yourself?

02:13
Evelyn Granizo: Hello everyone. It's an honor to be a part of Ignition community. My name is Evelyn Granizo. I'm from Ecuador. I work as senior project engineer at ASE Global, formerly known as Automation Solutions Ecuador. I have worked at ASE for over 13 years, in which I have participated in different projects. Designing, implementing, deploying control and management systems inside and outside Ecuador. ASE Global is a system integrator with over 20 years of experience implementing customized solutions in industrial automation, telemetry, IT/OT convergence, and control and management systems in different industries. We have worked in oil and gas, food and beverage, manufacturing, automotive, telecommunication, among others. ASE also provides technical training. The offices are in Quito and Guayaquil here in Ecuador, but we have customers in many countries in South and North America.

03:19
Remus Pop: Awesome. Hey everybody. My name is Remus Pop. I'm a partner at Concept Reply. Concept Reply is part of the Reply family of companies. Reply is a global systems integrator headquartered out of Turin, Italy. We have about 15,000 people globally. But what's unique about Reply is that those 15,000 people are spread across about 200 different operating companies. And so Concept Reply is one of those companies based here in the Detroit area with offices in Chicago as well. And our focus is on the world of connected things. We work in connected vehicle, connected product and connected factory initiatives. Obviously in the connected factory space we do a lot of work with Ignition. My background: I've spent about 12 years now working with Inductive Automation on the Ignition platform and span across a lot of different types of roles from end user all the way now into the integrator space. Happy to be here and great to be a part of this conversation.

04:10
Chris Taylor: My name is Chris Taylor. I'm the owner and managing director of BIJC Limited here in the UK. My background is in power engineering. I did an old-fashioned apprenticeship, did a bit of university, and really studied control systems for power engineering in the late '80s and honed that through the '90s. PLC work and SCADA systems in the 2000s. And I found Inductive Automation and started working with Ignition when it was factory PMI back in about 2009. As an integrator, we're a smaller company. There's 11 of us right now. We're growing... We're doubling every two years. Interviewing today, and we're an Ignition house. We only deal with Ignition and PLCs.

05:04
Don Pearson: Thanks, Chris. All right, let's go to today's agenda. The agenda for today is we'll first take a look at a couple of slides and talk about our company, Inductive Automation. I'll say a few things about our product Ignition. Then we'll get into a group discussion with our integrator guests about several aspects of Ignition, including how we started with it, going all-in using different industries, bottom line impact, and how you might be looking at Ignition into the future. Then we'll take a little bit of time for Chris Fischer to talk about our integrator program and discuss our view on how we can help integrators to be more successful. We'll answer questions from the audience. So if you're watching, and you want to ask a question, just go to the questions area, go to webinar and just type in your question. At the end, we'll get to as many as we can. However, we urge everybody to make sure and just reach out to a representative, and they'll answer it for you. In case you're wondering, since someone already asked, the recording and the slides from the webinar will be available on our website starting tomorrow. If you're not already familiar with Inductive Automation, here's a few facts about us.

06:19
Don Pearson: Our software Ignition is used by 65% of Fortune 100 companies, which means that it's used every day somewhere in the world by the biggest companies around the world. We have over... I think it's up to 4400 integration firms now in the integrator program, representing somewhere, I don't know, between 75 and 100,000 engineers who are all potential individuals to do programs with our Ignition. We have a highly diversified customer base. Many, many industries. Tens of thousands of Ignition installations in somewhere around 140 countries right now. We've been in business for 22 years. We have 350-plus employees. And that's a little bit about us. You can get us in the US or at our office in Australia. If you're wondering what Ignition is, if it's new to you. We like to say it's the Unlimited Platform for SCADA and so much more. In fact, Ignition enables you to connect to design, deploy basically any industrial application you need, including SCADA, HMI, MES, and IIoT. It acts as a central hub, if you will, for everything on the plant floor and beyond: web-based, web-managed, web-deployed, unlimited licensing, cross-platform. It offers real industrial strength, security, and stability also. I just want to say a couple of things about us and how we at Inductive came from integrator roots.

07:57
Don Pearson: We were founded in 2003 by Steve Hechtman. He worked for 25 years plus as an integrator, and basically, Steve... He just got kind of frustrated with the SCADA software that was available. The software... The licensing was slow; it was antiquated, difficult to work with and the license was pretty expensive, and support costs were expensive. He put together what we jokingly used to say was an A team of IT folks and SCADA technology people and cross-pollinated IT and SCADA technologies to develop a product that addressed the major pain points of old SCADA software. That's where Ignition came from. And that, I think, explains a little bit why it was pretty well received by integrators throughout the world when Steve decided to not just use it himself as an integrator but make it available to integrators throughout the world. I can also say we're now two decades plus since Steve started the company, but the focus on integrators has not changed, and it's not going to change. Our current CEO, Colby, is also someone who basically has been said, quote-wise, is what you see here. Our integrators, or our dedication to integrators, is unique in the industry.

09:16
Don Pearson: It comes from our history and understanding of the crucial role they play. Integrators are experts in Ignition and their particular verticals, but more importantly, they are the final mile connecting our software to the plant floor. It's true, integrators... You guys are the ones that get Ignition in the door, so to speak, in to your customers, into their hands, and installed on the plant floor. Chris Fischer, I think, will probably say it again, but he often says we always try and tell a better together story between us and our integrators. We serve our people to help them out any way we possibly can. Integrators also act as guides on their customer's Digital Transformation journey. Every company is at different stages in that journey, whether the customer is upgrading systems, aligning OT and IT, implementing IoT program, or anything else; integrators are the ones who help them take the next step. They understand the plant floor and the people who work there, and they also understand the latest technologies, and they're very adept at bringing those worlds closer together. Integrators are the ones...

10:30
Don Pearson: You guys are the ones who build strong relationships. You have a deep understanding of the customer's needs and you get to know the company and find out what they need. They build and install all the solutions, maintain the relationship with the customer's needs as those needs change over time. So really deeply invested in the customer success and they also bring whatever specialized expertise and an outside perspective which makes you extremely valuable to those customers. Integrators also, which we really appreciate, they know Ignition and how to leverage it to the customers. They know how to use Ignition to make superior SCADA systems and know how to extend Ignition across the enterprise to add tremendous value and help significantly in the Digital Transformation challenges faced by a lot of your customers. Chris Fischer, I'm going to give you a chance here because as someone who works every day with integrators, your thoughts on the importance of Inductive Automation and our integrator relationships.

11:33
Chris Fischer: Yeah, thanks, Don. We really want our integrator program to empower integrators to succeed with Ignition. They're our boots on the ground, so to speak. We're not on the factory floor facing the daily challenges of automation and controls. So we're trying to provide the necessary tools and resources integrators need to transform their customer's business and their own businesses. Between the unlimited licensing model of the software, our educational resources, free technical support and more, we're striving to give you the tools you as integrators need for transformation and growth with your customers. Back to you, Don.

12:11
Don Pearson: Thanks, Chris. I just want to say before we get into discussion, since I know all the folks who are on this panel today. 20 years ago, when Steve said to me, I'd like you to take charge of getting established on the Integrator Program. I've had the pleasure to meet all of you over those years. And it's become very surreal that you even the copy that I read talking about integrators; it is sincere. The appreciation for what you do, the way you go to market. The way you build relationships with customers. All that stuff is... There's no way Inductive Automation exists and Ignition does anything without you. And so for those on the panel here, but those that are on the call that are here to learn a little bit more about that. It comes, as Steve has said many times in the early days; he says, "You can take Ignition, put it on a computer, it'll sit there for 10 years and do absolutely nothing." We're going to talk a little bit about what you take that off the computer and make it do. So with that, let's go to the first question, which is really where or when did you start with Ignition? And why did you start with Ignition? I think the group discussion is a good place to start the journey there. So maybe I'll start with you, Scott.Don Pearson: Thanks, Chris. I just want to say before we get into discussion, since I know all the folks who are on this panel today. 20 years ago, when Steve said to me, I'd like you to take charge of getting established on the Integrator Program. I've had the pleasure to meet all of you over those years. And it's become very surreal that you even the copy that I read talking about integrators; it is sincere. The appreciation for what you do, the way you go to market. The way you build relationships with customers. All that stuff is... There's no way Inductive Automation exists and Ignition does anything without you. And so for those on the panel here, but those that are on the call that are here to learn a little bit more about that. It comes, as Steve has said many times in the early days; he says, "You can take Ignition, put it on a computer, it'll sit there for 10 years and do absolutely nothing." We're going to talk a little bit about what you take that off the computer and make it do. So with that, let's go to the first question, which is really where or when did you start with Ignition? And why did you start with Ignition? I think the group discussion is a good place to start the journey there. So maybe I'll start with you, Scott.

13:28
Scott Whitlock: Yeah, thanks, Don. For us, we've always used what our customers request us to use. And there's a time in our history where we did consulting, where we helped customers select mainly MES type products. But as of late, we have very rarely... Customers come to us and say, we'd really like you to build this solution and this particular product. And sometimes it's a legacy product, like maybe a Wonderware product, and other times they're starting their journey with Ignition. So to use a year for us, it was probably the 2016-2017 timeframe when we started in earnest. I came to my first ICC conference about that time and again from an integration perspective, because we are the boots on the ground and we are that last mile. We like to use proven technology. So we weren't around for the early days or the bleeding edge of Ignition. But we were happy to join and catch that wave as you guys were really starting to grow in the mid 20 teens. And so that's when our journey started and we started part of a team here. And now we've grown to having a full Ignition team of about 35 people that only focus on Ignition. That's our journey.

14:42
Don Pearson: Totally appreciate that, Scott. Yes, you missed some of the bleeding edge days, but probably to your benefit. Your timing was good, Scott, your timing was good. Thanks so much. Evelyn, a little bit about you?

14:57
Evelyn Granizo: Yeah, ASE and I started using Ignition in 2013. Back then we worked with three of the most well known SCADA brands around the world. So we thought we didn't need another SCADA tool. But our current account executive, Maria Chinappi didn't give up until she could show us a demo of Ignition and that was it. The demo changed it all. We realized Ignition offered solutions where other platforms were limited. So all our engineers took the Inductive University, we took the training there at Folsom, we became the first CTC in Spanish and we have been finalist of ICC six times already. I hope we can win one of these times.

15:46
Don Pearson: I think you're going to, Evelyn. I think you're going to.

15:52
Evelyn Granizo: Since then, Ignition became our primary platform to offer solutions. In fact, currently we don't have any single project that is not being developed using Ignition. That was our journey.

16:05
Don Pearson: That's great. You've been training people from around South America, I think have come to the CTC. Yeah, so appreciated. And Maria Tanabe could not speak higher of you and the team there. So we're very appreciative. So thank you.

16:19
Evelyn Granizo: Thank you.

16:20
Don Pearson: All right, let's go to Remus.

16:24
Remus Pop: Thanks, Don. I feel like I've told this story a million times, so what's one more? Doesn't hurt.

16:30
Don Pearson: One more.

16:31
Remus Pop: Yeah. My journey with Ignition is a little different. I was an end user at the time. I was working for a battery manufacturer based here in the Detroit area, and I was a controls engineer. As we went bankrupt and were bought by a Chinese entity, I was the one that was volunteered to deploy a custom MES system at our sister site in China. Not knowing much about MES and software development as just being a controls engineer. My job was to find a way to make that easy for me over the next couple of years. I literally just googled off-the-shelf MES. Ignition popped up. I downloaded a demo, started working with it, and within a matter of an hour, I was already connected to a bunch of machines in my plant. Building some dashboards, and it was pretty incredible.

17:16
Remus Pop: I got a call shortly after that from Vannessa Garcia, who's still my sales rep today. And we walked through some pricing models and everything that I was looking for. And she had mentioned that, "Hey, there's actually a training coming up in a couple of weeks in Folsom. You should come." And so I did. I booked a trip to Folsom. I stayed for core training. The week after core training was ICC. I stayed for ICC. Five days after that was the Ignition MES modules training. This was before they were spun off of Sepasoft. I stayed for that, so I was there for 18 days in Folsom. Pretty much drank from the fire hose of Ignition. And then I spent the next two years living in the Shanghai area deploying an Ignition-based MES system at our sites there. And it was an incredibly career-altering moment for me where I really started to understand the power of a platform like Ignition and why I still use it today.

18:11
Don Pearson: I know I've heard that story a few times, Remus, but I do appreciate you. You are the poster child of someone who drank from the fire hose. I will say that for sure. Thanks so much. All right, Chris Taylor, over to you. How did you get started with Ignition, and why?

18:26
Chris Taylor: For me, I was the technical director of another company, and we had a few pain points with some HMIs and SCADA. We needed to view them remotely, and it was extremely difficult. And I started looking. I did find Factory PMI a few months before, but because it was called Factory, I thought it had something to do with another vendor and that the only reason they're called Factory is because they need a two-week shutdown every year. So I dismissed it at first, but then I downloaded it. If anyone's installed other SCADA systems, they know that you can set aside half a day to install it, and the Ignition installed in three minutes. Within an hour, I was connected to POCs. And that was just a breakthrough moment for me. And it did everything I needed it to do. It's always done everything I've ever needed it to do. Or I can make it do what I need it to do, even if it means writing our own modules. It's very scalable. At the time, as I said, I was employed by someone else. I went to the management and said, "You need to focus on this product. We need to change how we operate. This needs to be our go-to platform." They didn't agree, so eventually I left, and I started BIJC and haven't really looked back since.

19:45
Don Pearson: What year was that? When did you start BIJC?

19:48
Chris Taylor: I started BIJC 2013. We're 12 years old now.

19:55
Don Pearson: All right, thank you.

19:57
Chris Taylor: 7.6, I think was the first version I used.

20:01
Don Pearson: Oh, okay. I've just got to ask you one side question. I'm digressing here, but I know you were honored at ICC for a little something you've done in the community or something. Can you just share a little bit about that, if you could?

20:14
Chris Taylor: Okay, I'm the trustee of a charity in the UK called SERV Kent, which is a regional charity that operates out-of-hours blood distribution, blood courier services between hospitals and blood banks, and things like that. And we didn't have any platform for all of the members. We have about 200 members who volunteer their time and fuel to go out and deliver these things. Most of it's on motorbikes. I do like a motorbike. And so BIJC, my company, we... When Perspective came out... I'll give some context. When Perspective came out, we really needed a reason to learn it, a project to learn it on. We're great believers of learning by doing. And so we picked this project. So it was a project to build a rota system and everything that you need to manage a charity with lots of individuals who need to log on and see what's happening. Commit themselves to volunteering on certain days, all of that sort of thing. Fleet management. A great many things, and that's what we use Ignition for. So we started that in 2019, and it's been running six years now, and we've had virtually zero downtime. As of about 18 months ago, Ignition started their... What do you call it, Don? The community.

21:41
Don Pearson: The Community Impact Program, where we will help folks do things out in the community.

21:46
Chris Taylor: Yeah, we were one of the first recipients of that, and now we're very thankful that we don't have to find any money for any of our upgrades to our modules. And that's made a real big difference to us.

22:00
Don Pearson: I know that was a little digression, but I appreciate that, Chris. Let's go on to our next question. I know some of you jumped the gun and started to answer this in the past. But talking about getting started with Ignition, let's talk about reaching maybe a fork in the road like you did, Chris, when you actually left the company and started your own. When you decided to go all-in with Ignition, so to speak. When did you decide to go all-in to leverage Ignition as much as possible? And how has that impacted your business, or how has it helped your customers? Well, Chris, let's go ahead and start with you on this one.

22:34
Chris Taylor: Well, so as I just said, I started the business because I believed in the product, and I wouldn't have a business without it. How has it changed the business? Well, as I said when I introduced myself. At the moment, we're growing 100% every two years. It is phenomenal. And Ignition is not the same product that it was 10 years ago. It has grown so much, and it does so much more. The addition of MQTT modules has made this truly a global platform. We're doing projects now where we have multiple sites and bringing everything into Azure. Then with the web dev module, building API so people can get their data through API. I know that's coming in 8.3, and it'd be more native, but there's nothing you can't do with this product if you put your mind to it. It's amazing.

23:36
Don Pearson: Thanks, Chris. Scott, how about your answer to these questions?

23:41
Scott Whitlock: Yeah, all in. As I mentioned before, we have a lot of customers who are still on legacy products. So I'd say we're not all-in as a whole company, like Chris just mentioned his company is. However, I mentioned this Ignition team that we have. We have people that are certified and using Ignition, among many other teams at Flexware. So we are very much in on using Ignition, and that's a huge testimony to the growth of the product, the capability of the product. Because we have customers that said, "We're a legacy Rockwell house or Wonderware house" or something like that. We're not heading in that direction. And then a year later, they're like, "Yeah, we're using it over here and we're trying it over here. We're testing it over there." And in some of those cases, it has become a standard for them. So it allows us to go more all-in. The other comment I'd make here how it helped change our businesses. For instance, we weren't really doing a lot in utilities, but that's one of those industries that... I've been in this business 33 years, and all those houses are ready to flip.

24:52
Scott Whitlock: All those old HMI/SCADA systems like Iconics and stuff like that. They're ready to be upgraded. And we got an opportunity in the utility space because we were flipping those older technologies to Ignition. So it's enabled us to go into even other industries, which is powerful for us.

25:08
Don Pearson: Yeah, just to that point, we're seeing a similar thing happen in water wastewater. So much of the water wastewater systems are at end of life, and they need to be flipped. And Ignition's right there, willing to be capable in that vertical as well as what you're talking about there. So, thanks. Evelyn. Your answers to the questions.

25:30
Evelyn Granizo: Yeah. Well, Ignition changed the way we integrators deliver solutions. Ignition offers so many advantages over traditional SCADA. Like you have mentioned so many already. Like the licensing model, for example. Having no limitation of client concurrent designers tags or history points is a plus. Also, Ignition offers a two-hour trial so you can test all of the functionalities. It is cross-platform; it is installed quickly and easily, so that helps to reduce downtimes and being such a versatility software to implement any kind of solution. I think there are more than enough reasons to go all-in with Ignition. Since we use Ignition, we have reduced development and deployment time. Also, Ignition gave us the opportunity to expand internationally because you can develop and deploy systems remotely. So thanks to Ignition, we have been implemented systems and trained people in many countries. Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico, United States and even Sweden. And for customers, Ignition has helped them to reduce license, maintenance, and support costs. Besides, Ignition allows to integrate different devices and third-party software so customers don't have to buy and maintain different platforms. So we say let's go all-in.

27:00
Don Pearson: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's been great to watch you guys just expand all over South America and even internationally beyond that. So thanks. All right, Remus, a little more about your story.

27:12
Remus Pop: Sure, sure. For me personally, I decided to go all-in on Ignition from that day, 12 or 13 years ago. I think it's a running joke that I've had a few jobs since that time, but everywhere I've gone, I've taken Ignition with me both from the end-user perspective as well now from an integrator side. For us, it's a tool that allows us to rapidly deploy a solution for our customers across any industry or vertical. So for us, I think it's extremely interesting that some of the projects we work on have absolutely nothing to do with manufacturing or factories. Yet we're using Ignition as a tool to deliver data and projects across a wide variety of different systems. I say for me, in the 13 years I've worked with Ignition, I've never once deployed it as a SCADA system. For me, it's always been a platform for solving business problems. And I think I've taken that into the world of integration now and just helping our customers understand that there are tools available today that allow us to connect to industrial-type equipment and move data around an industrial ecosystem like we've never had before.

28:20
Remus Pop: And so I joked also at ICC this last year that 8.3 feels for me like the first version of Ignition that's been focused 100% on my type of work. I call it the Enterprise edition because it's now so focused on enterprise scalability. The ability to deliver a solution across one site, two sites, 250 sites, factories. Car washes is a fun one that I'm working on now using Ignition. It's a wild platform. And so for us, it's just been that secret weapon that we have that we know we can deliver anything that comes our way. Like Chris said earlier, I haven't come across a problem I could not solve building in Ignition.

29:02
Don Pearson: Thanks, Remus. I appreciate you guys' answers. To further explore the effect Ignition has had with you. Tell us how Ignition has helped expand across maybe cross-industries like Scott just said. And a lot of the people attending are interested maybe in what they're doing with Ignition, how it's affected your business. So you can even do this from the perspective of integrators on this webinar who might want to hear how it helps you get business, how it helps you expand across industries. Remus, you go ahead and start this one.

29:37
Remus Pop: Yeah. I'll give you a great example. I'll talk about a project that we're working on right now that has absolutely nothing to do with manufacturing. We're working with a customer that manages and maintains a fleet of about 2,500 different car washes. And one of the things they're trying to deploy is a solution to do predictive and preventative maintenance of their fleet of car washes. Looking at things like bay temperature, door open, door closed, vibration of the pumps and the motors, and the conveyors. All the way up into getting to a point of using AI-based computer vision to detect when someone's sunroof is open, to doing loyalty programs around OCR detection of license plates. And when we put the architecture together, Ignition was at the core of it. Because of the cost of the license to deploy into 2,500 car washes, there really wasn't even anything that would come close to the cost of an Ignition Edge license in each one of these factories and the ability to deploy it in such a variety of different ways. So for us, it's been able to take the skill set that we have of doing these solutions inside of a factory environment with traditional PLCs and automation and applying that same thinking and methodology into environments that would not typically be a normal type of use case like that.

30:46
Remus Pop: So for us, it's just been, like I said, that secret weapon that allows us to rapidly build out these use cases and pilots where it might take a competitor two to three months because they don't know about Ignition. It takes us two or three days. And so it's been incredible for us.

31:04
Don Pearson: That's a great story. That's exactly what I hoped you'd share. Thanks so much. Chris, how about you? In terms of expanding to cross-industries, how has it helped you just overall in terms of acquiring and deploying business?

31:16
Chris Taylor: For us, our main vertical data centers... Power distribution in data centers, which is growing vastly. But the integrator program has been fantastic for us because new customers can look on the Ignition website; they can look up integrators in their area or integrators that do the kind of work that they want to do. And we've been contacted numerous times by companies we've never done business with that we have no connection with. You go and see them, speak to them. They realize that you know the product, and we've earned work. And now probably 50% of our turnover has been based initially from new customers that have sought us out. I have no salesmen. I don't need them. I need engineers first because there's too much work coming in.

32:16
Don Pearson: I think that's a good problem there that you have. So thanks. Thank you, Chris. Scott, how about your answer? I know you kind of got into it a little bit before on cross-industry in terms of utilities, but...

32:30
Scott Whitlock: Yeah. But let me tie on to the comment I made earlier about not being on the bleeding edge. When you get to the maturity that Ignition is today, it enables you to build upon that with certain kinds. Yes, everybody said it on this call. You can do anything with this product. But the way that you start making some more money and you lower the stress and the cost for people is you do repeatable solutions. And so we have been able to take being an MES-level integrator; we've built Quick Start Kits, solution ware, and repeatable stuff on top of Ignition in terms of what we call SparkMES or SparkSCADA. And those are tools that we use today, internal for our integration teams and our customers, where we... In 30 years of doing MES solutions, there is no such thing as an off-the-shelf... Commercial off-the-shelf MES package. I see Raymond shaking his head and smiling. So we said, "Hey, we're going to take this platform that everybody loves and uses and becoming more and more standard, and we're going to build capabilities on top of that that have 50%, 60%, 70% out-of-the-box functionality."

33:41
Scott Whitlock: We know you're going to customize it from there because everybody does. If you can do this, can you do that? Those kinds of questions. But that has unlocked... I don't know the exact numbers, but I bet 50% of our Ignition work has to do with those Quick Start kits. SparkSCADA and SparkMES for us. And so that's unlocked a whole new world for us revenue-wise, repeatability-wise, scalability. And we're finding tremendous value in that.

34:09
Don Pearson: That's great. Thank you, Scott. Evelyn, how has Ignition helped in expanding across industries, and how has it helped?

34:18
Evelyn Granizo: Well, I think every project leaves knowledge to be used in the next one. But with Ignition, it's more simple. For example, we use MQTT protocol in a tool steel manufacturer in Sweden, and then that knowledge was applied into an oil & gas company here in America, giving a better solution. Also, for example, the design and implementation of your architectures and cybersecurity strategy can be applied to every big industry. The most important thing is that before we were control system integrator and the front end was not that attractive. It was not necessary to be attractive. But since we use Ignition and Perspective, we have learned HTML and CSS tools that are commonly used in business applications, and now we are developing better attractive SCADAs.

35:18
Don Pearson: Thank you. Thanks to all of you for your answers on that. I'm going to do. Let's go to the next question because I'm going to digress a little bit during this question. I have a couple things I'm thinking of asking a couple of you. But let's do this one. Where does Ignition have the greatest impact on a company's bottom line? Evelyn, you go ahead and start with that one this time.

35:39
Evelyn Granizo: That's great. Well, Ignition has an impact on every area of the company at different edges. I think financially would be the one to mention because we have said licensing and maintenance costs are less of any other software of similar purposes. The cost of deployment support and downtime are reduced to the capabilities to access remotely and how fast it can be online. It also helps to centralize data to make decisions to improve production with less raw material waste. I think financially would be one of the top edges. But besides that, I think Ignition brings all the area of the company together. Thanks to Ignition, OT and IT are not a part anymore. You can see the company as a whole. Thank you, Don.

36:32
Don Pearson: Thank you. How about you, Remus?

36:35
Remus Pop: Yeah, I think I'll take this a couple of different ways. Because of the flexibility of the deployment and the deployment capability that you now have. Ignition Edge, Ignition Edge Panel, full-on Ignition, the flexibility of the modules, Cloud Edition. I think we can really tailor a solution to match multiple different expected outcomes for a customer. Whether it's, we want to be able to deploy this as cheap as possible. Ignition Edge with licenses, maybe some cloud. Or if it's, we want to make it as robust and secure and all the other things as possible. And so for us, I think the ability to not have to fork up the massive license cost up front is a big one. The flexibility of different deployment models is another one. And then also the craziness of still offering unlimited perpetual license. I think not many competitors in the space will do that. And then to then go beyond that and offer it for free as long as you want by just sitting there and hitting the reset button. I've often joked that you could literally just hire an intern and pay them to just sit there and hit the reset trial button every two hours.

37:45
Remus Pop: But the cost of Ignition license, it would actually be cheaper to just buy the license. And so I think that goes a long way. I think just the flexibility, the unlimited-ness of it. It allows a company to not have to worry about starting today and having the capability tomorrow to do what tomorrow's problems might require.

38:04
Don Pearson: Thanks, Remus. Chris, your thoughts?

38:07
Chris Taylor: Well, in a similar vein. We don't have to calculate how much Ignition is going to cost us for any project. We know the costs. And I don't have to spend hours looking at tag count or seat counts. And I can say to my customers, "Going forward, if you expand, it doesn't matter." And you get a stunned silence. And they say, "Well, no, no, if I need five more people, five more screens, how much is it going to cost?" I say, "Well, if you've got the hardware, nothing." And so that's a very good reason. But for our bottom line, the speed of development. Perspective takes a bit more work, but Ignition allows you... You can do everything in adjacent so you can build screens programically. You don't have to sit there and do them by hand anymore. You can build lots and lots of views individually and then import them. Ignition has a really good facility for multiple developers developing simultaneously on the same project. There are no difficulties in merging projects together and things like that. And that is a real time saver, and that does save a lot of money compared to other SCADA platforms out there.

39:31
Don Pearson: Thanks, Chris, I appreciate that. Scott, your thoughts on the question.

39:38
Scott Whitlock: Don, you may remember I came out and visited with the leadership at Inductive in 2023, and I just pulled up the slide deck that I brought with me. And so in terms of bottom line impact, we've all talked about licensing and time trials and being able to download software, but this is what I wrote down in 2016. Inductive Automation really does run the company from their core principles and founding ideas. New technology, new licensing model, new business model, new ethical model. Get out of the integrator's way. Reduce friction, 3-minute installs, no limits on users, clients, tags, etc. Online university for training, downloadable trials, 30-day demos, etc. So me, that new way of thinking that Steve invented and having been an integrator and wanting to get out of not only the integrator's way but the end user's way of... I've been a part of so many projects where we as an integrator or the customer will... What's the word I'm looking for? We will design a solution to work around the licensing model. And it's crazy. So if you don't have to design a solution to work around a licensing model, it just makes everything so much easier, and all of that vision and simplicity and lowering of friction falls to the bottom line, whether that's an integrator or the end user. I think those are powerful concepts that would love... Obviously, you guys are continuing to run the business that way, but that is a winning strategy.

41:10
Don Pearson: Just as an aside to what you said, I remember one of our water/wastewater case studies out of Utah a few years ago had basically... They were replacing a legacy system with Ignition. And the legacy system had been designed around finance, meaning how much can we do for the tag count to not go over the top to the next tag count requirement, basically. And when they finished their system, they were just migrating to try and get the same functionality. They'd gone from a 20,000-tag system to a 92,000-tag system because they could do what the heck they wanted. And now they had so much more benefit because the people designing the system did not have to think about money. That was already handled. And Travis and I went down to it years ago. We went down to a now big customer, but down to a wine haven in the central valley around Modesto. And we were sitting in there, and outside the window was 20 different large wine bins where they shipped international wine. And we asked them about what they did to understand what was going on on those bins. And he said, "It would cost us $2,000 to get any connectivity to each one of those bins, so we don't have it."

42:20
Don Pearson: And they had to think about what they were going to get in data based on how many tags they had. So part of the reason for this webinar is just to have an informal discussion. So I'm going to go off script here a little bit and ask you another question, Scott. Having spent time with you there with the great system you guys developed. The MES work that you did, and you took me into Purdue, where I know you're a grad, your wife's a grad, your kids are grads, their spouses are grads. You are Purdue. You bleed Purdue, I think. But you also get some benefit in terms of personnel. Chris said what he needs is more developers, not more salespeople. Can you just comment a little bit about, I know we have a university engagement program. We give software to over 200 universities, and it's growing. Purdue's one of them. I think I heard they have 17 licenses now or something all over. So can you just take a minute? I know we don't have that much time, but just comment on that in relation to your business maybe.

43:18
Scott Whitlock: Yeah, now I think I'll just tie back into the community and the excitement. You can sense it from the integrators on this call. And I know, I think there's over what? 4,000 integrators now? Well over 100 Premier Integrators. I mean, this is... It has become a major tool in everybody's toolbox to solve problems. So part of what we're trying to do, and I love that you guys support the... integrate the university programs because for years and years and years, other technology providers have seeded those universities with their technology. And guess what? If you know how to program a Rockwell PLC or a Siemens PLC or use a particular piece of software when you come out of school, what do you use when you hit your first job? You use what you knew from school. So it's a natural. It's a very, very smart strategy on your part to get students involved in that. For us, because Purdue University is just an hour up the road. I don't know what it is right now. It used to be close to 60% of our folks were Purdue grads. It's probably closer to 50 now. But we do spend a lot of time with them, and they have put in some incredible smart manufacturing lab capabilities that we hope to keep encouraging boilermakers to become flex dogs.

44:32
Don Pearson: A good strategy. A good strategy. Okay, let's move on to the next question here. How do you envision your company using Ignition into the future? This is just a chance for each of you to say a little bit about going forward. What you think? Scott, let's start with you on this one.

44:46
Scott Whitlock: Yeah, I think we've mentioned it, right? It's opening up other industries for us. I mentioned utilities for us. You mentioned water/wastewater, Don. It is for freshwater utilities for us. But even we've got Hitachi Energy in here today. I can't remember if I mentioned it, but we were acquired by Hitachi in 2022. So for us, that future comment... Hitachi is a large global company, and there is just unlimited capabilities of using Ignition not only in Hitachi group companies. We have manufacturing capabilities as well as other service provider divisions of Hitachi. So we see just unlimited growth potential for using Ignition across these Hitachi group of companies.

45:29
Don Pearson: That's great. How about your future, Evelyn? From your company. How do you see it?

45:37
Evelyn Granizo: Technology grows fast now, and Ignition is a sovereign to keep up. Thanks to Ignition, companies have been able to face Digital Transformation in less time with less cost. I think in the next few years we will migrate the remaining traditional SCADAs to keep implementing digital transformation. Also, I think we will increase the integration of Ignition with Microsoft tools. We will tend to implement more Ignition in the cloud, and why not in the near future to integrate Ignition with AI to expand capabilities? I think there is a lot to do in the next two, three years.

46:16
Don Pearson: Sounds like you will be busy. That's good. It's a good thing. How about you, Remus? What plans have you got going forward?

46:25
Remus Pop: Yeah, for us again, it's our secret weapon. So as we look to build capability in different types of verticals, I think we've seen a lot of interest lately in the last few years. Obviously, AI, like Evelyn just mentioned, is a huge buzz, but people still need to understand that you have to productionalize AI. You have to give it a purpose; you have to drive it down to the shop floor. You have to make it available for people in an environment that they're used to using it. Used to using tools like this. So what we look at when we look at these types of applications, we see Ignition as that gateway between the operators on the shop floor and a tool like GenAI. Working on a project right now with a customer that's embedded AWS Bedrock GenAI chatbot into the application that allows an operator on the shop floor to drill down into the machine's problems and ask it questions why it faulted. Doing things like pulling up maintenance documentation, tying into the CMMs to see the last time it was... executed a preventative maintenance on it. And so for us, Ignition will continue to be that glue in between all the different types of use cases and solutions that we have to go after.

47:29
Remus Pop: We're deploying it in worlds that we typically wouldn't have had a solution for, making it the interface for AI-based computer vision, making it the interface for GenAI chatbots, making it the interface between multiple different systems that normally would not have been able to talk to each other. And it's just that easy to use tool at a cost that is incredible for our customers. And yeah, we'll continue to push on it in all sorts of different new use cases.

47:57
Don Pearson: Thanks, Remus. Chris Taylor. Your thoughts.

48:01
Chris Taylor: Similar kind of things, large language models, we're experimenting with those as far as alarm management for end users. You get a big event and you get a cascade of alarms using those models to try and make sense of those alarms so that the end user doesn't get overwhelmed. That's something we're actively doing. Machine learning, not many people realize that Ignition's got some fairly comprehensive inbuilt machine learning. So we're using that. We've been using that for years. We'll carry on doing that. And just the spread from a basic SCADA system, an HMI. It's just going to grow and grow and grow until you've got systems that are global. We're doing systems now that really do circle the world.

48:53
Don Pearson: Yeah, yeah, thanks, Chris. Thanks to all of you for your answers to that. One of the reasons for this discussion was to just let other integrators come on and just hear you guys answer some questions. It's much appreciated. I think what I'd like to do now is with you, Chris Fischer, give you a chance to at least take a couple of slides in a couple of minutes for this group of attendees to tell them about the Integrator program. Because clearly it should be pretty clear now that Inductive Automation wants to partner with integrators and wants to be a partner in your success and the success of our mutual customers, the end users. So with that, Chris Fischer.

49:31
Chris Fischer: Yeah, thanks, Don. It's been a great discussion. We are certainly interested in partnering for success with our integrators. So our integrator program, it offers a lot of benefits. We offer free tech support to any company that's enrolled. We give substantial discounts based on the tier of the program that a company holds. There are no upfront costs or obligations to join. I don't think that too many other integrator programs offer that. We also have a really strong certification program via some of our educational resources. We do a lot of co-marketing with our integrators. Many integrators, Chris Taylor mentioned it, can see the benefits from having a company listing on inductiveautomation.com so that end users can find integrators who are operating in an area that they're located. You can really grow your business with the integrator program. There's a URL there on the screen. Like I said, it's free to join, so sign up today. That said, I could keep talking about the integrator program quite a bit, but I think we'd like to hear from the integrator panelists about their experience with the program. Can each of you just take a quick minute to tell us how has being in the integrator program helped your company? Chris, would you mind kicking things off there?

50:46
Chris Taylor: Yeah, sure. As I said before, there are two things that really help. One is the recognition from Inductive Automation that you've reached a certain milestone. So whether you are a core member or whether you're a gold member or a premium integrator... Premier integrator, sorry. That matters to some customers. That's very useful, and you can use that as a credential as part of your sales. The other thing is it does help you get sales. You do get called. It's really quite strange to see an email pop up from someone saying, "Oh, I saw your company on the integrator website. Can we have a chat, please, because I think that you can help us." It's great. It's really great. And they can be confident that you're going to know what you're talking about and that you can really help them.

51:39
Chris Fischer: Yeah. Thanks, Chris. Scott, Flexware has really maximized the value of our integrator program. What's your experience been like?

51:47
Scott Whitlock: I was just jotting down a few things to try to be succinct there, Chris. The training. You just mentioned no cost to get involved in the integrator program, which is not common across the industry. There's some sort of hurdle or bar or meet some minimum obligations or something like that. You guys don't compete with integrators. I love that. Back to the new business model that Steve mentioned that I wrote down in 2016. That's not the same across the industry. And it's not... I tend to talk about this a lot with the leadership at Inductive. It's not a make-all, break-all type thing. But margins on software. That's just additive to us as an integrator, where most of our revenue and profits are derived from doing projects well. But when we get to have a margin even regardless of the amount, that's just additive. So having your integrator partners as your channel and not competing with it as a direct channel, that's not common in the industry either. That's how the integrator program's been helping Flexware.

52:53
Chris Fischer: Yeah, thanks for that, Scott. Evelyn, how about you?

52:58
Evelyn Granizo: Well, joining the Integrator Program was a game changer for our business. It has allowed us to boost our credibility with official certification, get priority support and exclusive resources to enhance our project. Attract more clients through Inductive Automation network and unlock new business opportunities by expanding our industry connections. This program helped us to elevate our expertise, visibility, and success in the automation world. Besides, we believe that it's a win-win relationship because we rely on Inductive Automation not just as a supplier but as a partner. And we believe Inductive sees us as an ally to spread Ignition in Latin America. So everybody wins.

53:45
Chris Fischer: That's what we want. All right, Remus, how about you, yeah?

53:49
Scott Whitlock: I'll build off of what Evelyn said. I think she had a great point. It's a partnership, more so than I've seen with any other platform like this, where it's mutually beneficial wins. Better together. I think Don said earlier, I think the story of Ignition and an integrator is always a better together story. Even from a pre-sales support. Where we're getting on with a customer for the first time, maybe they don't know about Ignition. We can leverage our sales rep, an account exec, or anybody that can jump on and have that part of it as well. And then also even the free support is always a good one. When we onboard new engineers, the first thing we do with any new engineer that we hire is put them through Ignition training. And so right now I think we just hired three in the last few months. I think now all of them are about to be gold certified. Two of them, I think, already are. One is in the process. And so I think that ability and that platform to be able to leverage all of those things. I think just all around the partnership for me is what jumps out. Is always knowing that if there's something that we can't figure out within the Ignition platform, it's very easy to just ping somebody and get an answer within a matter of a few minutes-hour max. It's been excellent.

55:03
Chris Fischer: Yeah. Well, thanks, Remus, and thanks to all of the panelists today for sharing those insights and your experience. I think this has been a really great session. Hopefully everyone who's attended has a greater sense of what's possible with the Inductive Automation Integrator Program. So with that, Don, back to you to wrap things up.

55:22
Don Pearson: Thanks, Chris. And I just want to echo my thanks to all of you. I know you guys are busy, and you got a call from me or Chris or David to participate. Thanks for taking time from all the different parts of the world. We really do appreciate it. And the partnership is not taken lightly from our side of Inductive. One minute to wrap up, this slide basically says Ignition, it's there. Download it, takes 3 minutes. You've already heard today. Use it in trial mode for as long as you like. If you want to learn about it, you got Inductive University, and I don't know, 600+ videos on every aspect of it. Step by step, work at your own pace and learn Ignition. Comprehensive online user's manual. We want, and we'll continue to want, knowledge transfer to be as easy as possible. So you can get those certified integrators that know what they're doing and do projects. Also internationally, for those of you outside North America, we have a network of international initiative distributors. You can see them listed here. You can get to them on our website. You can also talk to Yegor Karnaukhov, who's our International Distribution Manager, if you want to get some help directly from him.

56:35
Don Pearson: I don't think we have time for Q&A, but we did Q&A the whole hour. I would say if you did not get a question answered, contact your rep; they'll answer it. The number is here at the bottom of the screen... Or at the middle of the screen there. And with that, we're a minute over here or two minutes over. I just want to say thanks again. We are complete. Connect with us on social media. We appreciate your interest. Have a great day.