Invensys, a leading supplier of state-of-the-art industrial software, systems and control equipment to the world’s major industries, has released a new, cloud-hosted Wonderware® Historian Online Edition that will enable customers to safely share more plant data with their workers while lowering their IT burden. Building on a base of more than 70,000 Wonderware Historian licenses, the company’s new Historian Online Edition offering can help reduce implementation time, provides universal access and delivers alternative pricing models for expanded industry use.

This innovative, Software as a Service offering uses a multi-tier Historian database architecture, storing data from one or more local plant-level Wonderware Historians onto a cloud-hosted, enterprise-wide instance. Data flows only one way—from the local historians to the online historian—and it is protected from cyber intrusion so it can safely be made available to more workers for better troubleshooting, reporting and analytics. The solution leverages Windows Azure cloud services from Microsoft Corp., so there is no software to install or set up, saving on valuable IT resources and reducing capital requirements.

“Our new Wonderware Historian Online Edition is a revolutionary way of accessing and using real-time data on demand,” said Rob McGreevy, vice president, information, asset and operations software for Invensys. “Providing a hosted historian simplifies set-up, installation and ongoing maintenance, and also improves usability for the end users by safely and securely making the information available wherever and whenever needed. Users can scale as their needs grow, without having to worry about infrastructure, hardware or software costs, upgrades or support.”

This service will be offered as a yearly subscription, based on the number of users accessing the data.  Reporting and analytics are delivered to the historian online edition through standard tools, including Invensys’ desktop reporting and analysis client, Wonderware Historian Client, along with its Wonderware SmartGlance® mobile reporting solution. System users can view the data via multiple devices, including desktop PCs, laptops, tablets and smart phones.

“Windows Azure is a scalable, flexible cloud platform, and Invensys’ introduction of its Wonderware Historian Online Edition on Windows Azure demonstrates the value industrial firms can gain from using a platform that removes the burden of requiring expensive IT infrastructure to bring new products quickly online,” said Dewey Forrester, senior director, business development and evangelism at Microsoft.

The new controller generation Simatic S7-1500 expands the range of the Siemens Industry Automation Division with two new. CPUs. CPU 1515-2 PN is designed for mid-level applications in machine and plant automation. CPU 1518-4PN/DP is now the most powerful device in the controller range and is intended for high-end applications. In addition, the new firmware V1.5 is available for the existing CPUs. This firmware considerably extends the functionality of all S7-1500 controllers, for example with option handling in a central configuration or the first steps for team engineering.

• Simatic S7-1500 CPU 1515-2 PN for mid-level applications

• Simatic S7-1500 CPU 1518-4 PN/DP for high-end applications

• Firmware version 1.5 for all Simatic S7-1500 CPUs

Simatic S7-1500 CPU 1518-4 PN/DP for high-end applications features a user memory of 13 MB (megabyte) and has four communication interfaces: a Profinet interface with 2-port switch for communication to the field level, two Profinet interfaces and a Profibus interface. The high performance and large memory allow the connection of up to 128 drive axes and their isochronous operation in the range of 250 microseconds. The CPU 1518 has a bit performance of 1 nanosecond.

Simatic S7-1500 CPU 1515-2 PN is a controller for mid-level applications. It features a user memory of 3.5 MB (500 kilobytes for program memory and 3 MB for data) and is equipped with two Profinet interfaces: a Profinet IO interface for communication to the field level and an interface which can also be used for integration in the company network, for example. The CPU 1515 has a bit performance of 30 nanoseconds.

With the new firmware version 1.5, S7-1500 controllers support option handling in the central configuration. This offers potential for saving in creation, commissioning and documentation for modular machine concepts, for example in series machine manufacturing. Machine manufacturers configure the maximum configuration for their machines once. The target configuration for the individual machine is defined with the user program. Initial team engineering functions, such as joint online commissioning of a controller, have also been implemented for complex projects. Users can automatically synchronize their local project copies with the controller. Maintenance of CPUs has also been improved: The hardware and program, including symbols and module parameters, can be detected quickly and without errors.

The Simatic S7-1500 controller range for medium to large applications in machine and plant automation comprises five CPUs with graded performance features. These differ, for example, with respect to the number of interfaces, bit performance and the size of the work memory. According to the individual automation task, the CPUs in the central configuration can be supplemented with as many as 31 expansion modules, for example with communication and technology modules or I/O modules which have the same format as the Simatic ET 200MP I/O system from Siemens.

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Invensys, a leading supplier of state-of-the-art industrial software, systems and control equipment to the world’s major industries, today welcomed customers, system integrators and partners to its 2013 Software Conference and Tech Support Symposium, being held this week in Dallas, Texas. Themed The Industrial Software Revolution Begins Now, the conference includes presentations and demonstrations of the company’s Avantis®, SimSci® and Wonderware® products and solutions. Sessions will cover topics such as situational awareness visualization, virtualization, mobile solutions, Cloud, EAM, MES, HMI, SCADA, the refining value chain and partner solutions.

Invensys kicked off the event with the release of its Wonderware InTouch® 2014 and Wonderware System Platform 2014 software. Delivering powerful, additional capabilities to its flagship HMI and supervisory offerings, the new software promises to improve operator awareness, optimize performance and minimize disruptions during startup, operation and shutdown.

“While other HMI providers have been focusing solely on graphics to improve the operator experience, Invensys has been collaborating closely with some of the world’s most recognized industrial companies—large and small—to understand their most pressing challenges and issues, and then devise the most innovative ways to solve them,” said John Krajewski, director of HMI and supervisory product management for Invensys.

One major operating challenge is the ability to more quickly identify and address abnormal situations before they impact operations. The company’s Wonderware InTouch 2014 and Wonderware System Platform 2014 software take a revolutionary new approach to HMI design and supervisory systems by providing new capabilities in alarm management, color representation, information presentation and window navigation, all intended to maximize user performance.

The updates include new object templates; styles for consistent and standardized colors and fonts in HMI applications; and consistency in the way alarms are represented throughout systems, all simply managed from a central repository.

“Utilizing 15 years of human interface studies, we have delivered a toolkit that transforms the way industrial users design and interface with their HMI,” Krajewski said. “We’ve moved from simply presenting data to displaying information in context. Instead of developing a library of ‘graphics,’ these new capabilities enable application builders to focus on creating content, easily assembling the most effective HMI applications and user interfaces for abnormal situation management.

“Initial testing indicates that these new styles and standardized colors can help users reduce situation interpretation time by 40 percent and can lead to a five-fold improvement in detecting abnormal situations before they occur. After the initial detection, our enhanced navigation can improve the success rate for handling abnormal situations by as much as 37 percent, and we’ve seen a 41 percent reduction in the time required to complete tasks.”

Moxa is pleased to announce the release of the DA-682A, our new 19 inch / 2U embedded rackmount computer featuring our latest software advance, Smart Recovery, an OS recovery utility with powerful automation features. Built around the latest Intel® Celeron/ i7 CPU (Sandy Bridge), the DA-682A matches strong computational power with valuable software and hardware innovations that increase system reliability, all with a modular flexibility that easily meets any industrial system connection requirements.

Smart Recovery is one of Moxa’s most recent software innovations, an OS backup and recovery system implemented at the BIOS level, giving the computing system strong protections against software corruption that can cause system slowdowns, instability, or operating system crashes. Smart Recovery improves system dependability and significantly reduces the risks and costs associated with the software corruptions that inevitably emerge as a platform ages.

Smart Recovery provides several different modes that encompass all the basic approaches to OS recovery, including manual recoveries; fully automated, machine-initiated recoveries; and remote user-initiated recoveries.