Q-mation Informer|Q-corner

As more and more customers begin to understand the true power and benefit of Wonderware's Industrial Application Server (IAS), the next natural step is to think about how to utilize this product in their own organizations. One of the basic but unnecessary concerns revolves around the question "Will the Industrial Application Server work with my existing FactorySuite 2000 system or do I need to abandon my current platform to benefit from IAS?"

We say that this is an unnecessary concern because as with all Wonderware products, you need not abandon any existing systems to take advantage of the latest Wonderware technology. Customers have several options in migrating to IAS ranging from leave their existing systems in place to total migration to the new platform. The choice is completely open. Below we will discuss the range of options to help you better understand the path forward but first, lets define some of the basic components that will allow each of these options to work.

As always, as Wonderware expands its options in connectivity, they continue to support protocols that users have embraced for their existing applications. Industrial Application Server can access the very same device data leveraged by your existing InTouch nodes by using client ApplicationObjects.

InTouch and InTouchView nodes that are part of an Industrial Application Server based system can access alarms from existing FactorySuite InTouch nodes (version 7.11 or higher), in addition to alarms coming from Industrial Application Server itself. This is because the same distributed alarming system introduced with InTouch 7.11 is also part of Industrial Application Server.

Existing InTouch nodes can continue to use the InTouch historian and the InTouch historical trend object. However, IndustrialSQL Server presents new opportunities. IndustrialSQL Server is the historian for Industrial Application Server. Data from your existing FactorySuite 2000 nodes can be collected and made available by the same IndustrialSQL Server that performs the historization work for Industrial Application Server.

Option 1: The FactorySuite 2000 application remains unchanged while the new system is IAS

In some cases, it may be desirable to upgrade an existing system to FactorySuite A2 in order to leverage the benefits of Industrial Application Server. However, there will be cases where you may decide to keep the existing system "as is" for a number of reasons. For example, perhaps the system has already been certified, or the system already complies with all your requirements. In this scenario, your existing workstation applications will remain unchanged and your existing workstations will continue to run the same version of software. Industrial Application Server will simply be installed to run your new equipment and will co-exist and communicate with your existing FactorySuite 2000 systems. Data from both systems can be shared via the IAS InTouchProxy object, alarm information can be collected from both systems using Alarm Logger and InSQL can act as a common historian for both legacy and new systems.

Option 2: FactorySuite 2000 nodes are upgraded to InTouch 8.0 or later, but not migrated to IAS.

You may be interested in upgrading the existing InTouch nodes to the latest version of InTouch (8.0 or later) without migrating the existing application to an IAS model. Additionally, you may want to bring data from the new IAS expansion to new windows in your existing InTouch nodes. By upgrading to Version 8.0 or later, you can now create new InTouch windows that access data from the objects in IAS without having to create new InTouch tags. Data is sent to InTouch nodes via remote tags that reference the built-in IAS "Galaxy" access name.

This configuration scenario allows you to:

Keep all of your visualization nodes running the same version of InTouch.
Browse the Application Server namespace from any InTouch node.
Use existing nodes to access data from the additional IAS nodes, as well as use new visualization nodes to get data from legacy ones.
Consolidate user accounts into a single security system.

Option 3: Complete Conversion of the existing FactorySuite 2000 System to IAS

Depending on your particular scenario and how your existing FactorySuite 2000 system was engineered, it may be desirable to completely migrate your existing system into the new IAS framework. Several variables will impact and drive this decision but complete conversion is absolutely an option that can and should be considered. Benefits of this migration include:

Elimination of tag limitations.
A single namespace.
Distribution of loads.
Reuse of code from one application to another.
Addition of structure to projects (using the plant model).
Simplification of maintenance and change propagation.
Enhanced communications.
Centralized security features.

Certainly complete migration involves additional work but in the end, can provide the most attractive solution. There are specific steps that are documented (See the InTouch - Industrial Application Server Migration and Coexistence Planning Guide (Call or e-mail Q-mation for a copy)) that should be followed to make this conversion work seamlessly.

Summary:

Regardless of which scenario described above is best for your individual application, however, the overriding takeaway of this article should be that you have many options when introducing Industrial Application Server into your existing plant environment. Migration of and/or coexistence with your existing FactorySuite 2000 system should not be a primary concern. If the features of IAS would help your organization, allow Q-mation to assist you in planning the path forward so that you can begin to benefit from the power of ArchestrA.

For complete details regarding the above scenarios, contact Q-mation for a copy of the InTouch - Industrial Application Server Migration and Coexistence Planning Guide