Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software has long been a staple in process manufacturing to help companies control and monitor equipment as well as manage alarms, reports, and process adjustments. Through most of those years, the assumption has been that the implementation of a SCADA system meant assigning additional resources to install, configure, secure, and maintain the local system. Doing so is often complex, costly, and time consuming.
However, as experts share in a recent article in Control Engineering, today’s teams are leaner and operations need to be more flexible and secure, so organizations often need a different way forward. Modern solutions, they explain, provide that option.
“Many organizations are moving away from locally managed SCADA systems, opting instead to partner with a trusted automation supplier to provide managed software-as-a-service (SaaS) SCADA solutions.”
SaaS is seamless
An organization maintaining on-prem infrastructure for its SCADA system must use resources—in personnel, budget, and time—to manage IT systems, software patches and updates, and troubleshooting. Moreover, if the team ever needs to scale the SCADA system, that can mean rip-and-replace of existing infrastructure to accommodate the changing needs.
In contrast, modern SaaS SCADA like Emerson’s DeltaV™ SaaS SCADA eliminates the need for teams to manage, upgrade, and maintain the SCADA system.
“A SaaS solution typically includes regular software updates and security patches as part of the subscription service. New features, enhanced functionality, security patches, hotfixes, and other content will automatically appear without the need for user intervention. This allows operations teams to focus on their core business, rather than system maintenance, while still having access to all the latest features and functionality so they can be as productive as possible.”
And when the team wants to expand its system, doing so is as simple as adding additional licenses, and the software will immediately accommodate the change, with the additional resource needs managed by the provider.
SaaS is secure
Process manufacturing organizations are increasingly becoming targets for cybersecurity bad actors. There are many cybersecurity technologies available to help navigate this challenge, but,
“The dynamic nature of the cybersecurity landscape requires the constant vigilance of a highly skilled IT team, a resource many corporations do not have in house.”
SaaS SCADA takes the responsibility of cybersecurity risk management out of the hands of OT personnel, providing them with built-in, layered, and—most importantly—managed cybersecurity solutions. With solutions like DeltaV SaaS SCADA, optimal cybersecurity is both built into the SCADA software itself, and provided by the cloud platform providers hosting the software.
Manage operational excellence, not IT
The modern global marketplace is complex and competitive. Because expenditures on IT infrastructure and resources offer little to no direct return on investment, companies are far better served by focusing budget, time and personnel on improving performance, operational excellence, and manufacturing flexibility.
Today’s most successful organizations are finding that moving to DeltaV SaaS SCADA is the first step in that journey—ultimately providing,
“the best of all worlds: increased productivity, flexibility, performance, along with reduced overhead.”
You can learn more about the benefits of DeltaV SaaS SCADA and read real-world examples of how it solved pressing business challenges by checking out the full article over at Control Engineering.
