UNS: Unified Namespace

Digital Transformation is all about data, and companies will only achieve this goal if they manage their data differently than in the past. A Unified Namespace (UNS) is the architectural foundation of successful Digital Transformation initiatives because it enables you to make data accessible from your entire enterprise to a single database.

What Is MES?

Simply put, a MES system is used to monitor and manage work-in-process on the factory floor, covering resource scheduling, production workflows, recipe management, traceability, inventory, quality assurance, document control, and more. A successful implementation of MES software will not only improve efficiency, but make manufacturers into better businesses.

NERC CIP Best Practices with Inductive Automation and Ignition

This guide addresses best practices for using Ignition and working with software vendors in a CIP-compliant way, with recommendations based on specific CIP standards.

Using Keycloak with Ignition

Keycloak is an open-source Identity and Access Management solution for adding authentication to applications or services. With Ignition, Keycloak functions as an Identity Provider to authenticate users and define roles to access client/session views.

What Is a Panel PC?

Most people are familiar with PCs (Personal Computers), but far fewer understand the difference between a retail PC and a panel PC. Whereas PCs are typically found in offices, panel PCs are specialized units designed to be used on or near machines in industrial environments like plant floors or remote sites. Panel PCs are built specifically to run HMI/SCADA software that allows operators to monitor and control processes in virtually every industry, including food & beverage, oil & gas, automotive, water & wastewater, and many more.

21 CFR Part 11 and Pharmaceutical Best Practices with Ignition

This guide addresses Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 21 CFR Part 11, Data Integrity and Good Automated Manufacturing Practices (GAMP). It provides best practices and guidelines supporting regulated Ignition applications in the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries.

Digital Transformation: Your Guide to Business Success

Digital Transformation is not just a buzzword or a passing fad businesses can afford to ignore. It’s the evolution of business.

What SCADA Systems Need in the Modern Era

Learn about the features you need to guarantee that a SCADA system is powerful and flexible enough to excel in the modern era.

Ignition Server Sizing and Architecture Guide

This guide is intended to provide some tips to help you determine the correct architecture depending on your requirements. It is important to note that any architecture that you come up with needs to be fully tested and verified. Throughout that process you can observe the performance characteristics of the server in order to make any necessary adjustments to the architecture. There is no guarantee on performance since it is based on your design choices.

Ignition 8 Deployment Best Practices

Inductive Automation provides this helpful guide for deploying Ignition applications. The guide offers Ignition 8 best practices for setting up development and testing workflow.

PLC: Programmable Logic Controller

Learn Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) basics: what it is, what its functions are, how it operates, and its importance in the world of automation.

3 Major Reasons Why Water Utilities Choose Ignition

Inductive Automation serves 600-plus water/wastewater facilities around the world and the number keeps growing. As more and more water utilities face the need to upgrade their current aging SCADA systems or install brand-new ones, we teamed up with Water & Wastes Digest to take a closer look at three of the biggest reasons why our customers choose Ignition for their projects.

Let's Encrypt Guide for Ignition

Ignition 8.0.3 introduces support for hot-reloading the Gateway’s SSL keystore. This capability enables Ignition to play well with services such as Let’s Encrypt which provide for automatic SSL certificate management. This article walks through one example for integrating Ignition with Let’s Encrypt.

Design Like a Pro: Best Practices for IIoT

The industrial automation industry is benefiting from the incredible opportunities made possible by the Internet of Things (IoT). While the IoT has shown promise within the corporate and consumer environment, there is a great opportunity to unlock the data in the industrial space.

Combining the Best of OT and IT

Two worlds are converging as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) takes the controls industry by storm. This white paper examines how professionals from Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) can find common ground to establish the IIoT. Through IIoT solutions such as MQTT, a lightweight communications protocol, industrial organizations can gain the ability to easily collect data from large remote systems and share it with the enterprise level.

Phased Deployment Methods

By leveraging common design patterns and standardized templates, teams can accelerate deployments while maintaining consistency across each environment.

Ignition + AWS Guide: Edge-to-Cloud Resiliency & Disaster Recovery

Ignition supports resilient architectures with features such as built-in redundancy and failover, store-and-forward to maintain data integrity, and support for edge computing and MQTT to enable decentralized processing and reduce reliance on central servers.

The Purdue Model And Ignition

In the automation world, the Purdue Model (also known as the Purdue reference model, Purdue network model, ISA 95, or the Automation Pyramid) is a well-known architectural framework for industrial control systems (ICS).

Inductive Automation Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)

This document outlines information on Ignition versioning, release schedule, security/vulnerability fixes, and an overview of our Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) including Quality Assurance (QA) processes.

What Is A System Integrator?

Whether you call them “control system integrators,” “systems integrators,” “system integrators,” or just “integrators,” these technology professionals combine different hardware, software, and communication protocols to create an automation system for their customers, and they are becoming increasingly important with the rising adoption of new automation technologies.

Experience The Updated Ignition Water Treatment Demo App

This demo is a vivid showcase of how Ignition's capabilities, such as real-time control, historical trending, alarming, reporting, and more, can be leveraged to enhance water treatment management and operational efficiency.

What Is Edge Computing?

Edge computing means moving computation and data storage capabilities closer to the source of data. Narrowing the distance between data generation and collection can reduce latency, bandwidth usage, and overall cost for the enterprise.

Enhancing the Student Learning Experience Via Ignition Software

Dr. Saeed Farahani, an Assistant Professor of Smart and Hybrid Manufacturing Systems at Clemson University, provided a dynamic real-world learning experience that reinforces engineering theory for automotive and mechanical engineering students with a semester-long class project utilizing Inductive Automation’s Ignition software platform.

See the New Ignition Data Center Demo App

Made specifically for the Data Center industry, the new demo app is a highly realistic, detailed view of what a real Ignition project for data centers looks like.

Hosted/Multi-tenant Ignition Cloud Edition Guidance

Inductive Automation is proud to permit the licensing use of hosted and multi-tenant applications at no additional cost to the licensee when using Ignition Cloud Edition. Hosting enables flexible resource sharing and “pay as you go” service models. Multi-tenancy can enable the broad delivery of custom Ignition applications as a service. This change enables new service provider roles with the potential to benefit the greater Ignition community. However, these models inherently introduce risk to stakeholders.

What Does ‘Ignition Edge Ready’ Mean?

Ignition Edge is a line of limited, lightweight software solutions designed for the edge of the network. Ignition Edge solutions allow you to easily and affordably expand your system to capture, process, and visualize critical data at the edge.

Choosing the Best SCADA Software: 6 Important Features

Discover how to choose the best Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software, with the six features you need and how to choose the right vendor.

New to Ignition? Learn the Lingo With This Glossary.

When you're a newcomer to the world of Ignition, it’s exciting to learn about all of the things you can do with it, but there are also some challenges. One of the challenging things is learning the various terms and acronyms associated with Ignition and with industrial automation in general. To help with that, we've put together this glossary of some of the most common terms that you'll hear. Along with a short definition, each term includes a link to further information. We hope this helps jumpstart your Ignition journey.

Integrating SQL Databases and SCADA to Maximize Efficiency and Reliability

SQL databases have been working in the background of many different systems for decades, but even today there are some who are hesitant to mix SQL with industrial automation software like supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). However, as more SCADA software users feel the pressure of keeping up in today’s connected, data-driven world, SQL has received more well-deserved attention.

How the Integrators at Automation Group Leverage Ignition to Support Culinary Oil Producers

Automation Group used Ignition to help two culinary oil companies solve critical problems and achieve positive results in their Digital Transformations.

Building a Sustainable and Secure SCADA System

This article offers guidelines for designing a SCADA system for water utilities, with five steps for sustainable SCADA and three security recommendations.

Ignition Security Hardening Guide

Included in this document are guidelines specifically for the Ignition software, as well as general suggestions regarding the hardware and network where Ignition is installed. The steps provided are recommendations rather than requirements and should be reviewed for relevance in each implementation.

How 3 Food & Beverage Companies are Tackling Problems with Ignition

When looking for an answer to their security and automation needs, three American companies — Chobani, MadTree Brewing, and SugarCreek — adopted Inductive Automation’s Ignition platform.

4 Water Districts Revitalized With Ignition

Four water districts in the U.S. switched their water district SCADA system to Ignition and reap the benefits of state-of-the-art technology.

Checklist: Avoid Visualization, Alarming & Security Mistakes

No matter how much experience we have, we all make mistakes sometimes. Fortunately, Ignition gives you the tools to not only fix those mistakes, but turn them into strengths when you’re developing projects in the future. Below, we’ve compiled a checklist of common mistakes and corresponding solutions to review before you start building so you can get your projects developed quickly and running as efficiently and securely as possible.

7 SCADA Security ‘Do’s’ & 4 SCADA Training ‘Don’ts’

At Inductive Automation, we’ve always tried to assist integrators and end users by sharing valuable information. As with all things in life and automation, that means spreading awareness about what you should do as well as what you shouldn’t. In that spirit, we’ve collated two recent articles from Water & Wastes Digest that examine best practices to help keep your system safe along with training misconceptions to avoid so that nothing holds your organization back.