Ask ten engineers to name the most popular SCADA systems and you get ten different lists. That is not because anyone is wrong. It is because “popular” depends on which room you are standing in. Walk into an automotive plant and you will see FactoryTalk View SE on the wall. Walk into a distribution control center two kilometers… Read More: Most Popular SCADA Systems and Where Each One Fits »
SCADA as a Service promises lower infrastructure costs, automatic software updates, and easier scalability. But unlike enterprise software, utility control systems cannot simply move everything into the cloud. Real-time control, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, and availability requirements make SCADA fundamentally different from a CRM or ERP platform. Software as a Service means the vendor runs the software in its… Read More: SCADA as a Service Explained: Cloud SCADA for Utilities »
A communication protocol is a set of rules and formats — both syntactic and semantic — that determines how two peer entities behave when they exchange data. Two devices that follow the same protocol can work together. Two devices that don’t follow the same protocol cannot communicate reliably, even if the physical connection is perfect. That definition sounds… Read More: What Is a Communication Protocol? Rules, Types, Examples »
Four vendors hold most of the ADMS market for large distribution utilities: Schneider Electric, Siemens, GE Vernova, and Hitachi Energy. On paper their datasheets read the same. Every one claims unified SCADA, DMS, and OMS, DER management, an open architecture, and IEC 62443 alignment. None of that is false. None of it helps you choose either. The real… Read More: ADMS Vendors: Schneider vs Siemens vs GE vs Hitachi »
An Advanced Distribution Management System is the software platform a utility uses to run its medium-voltage distribution network in real time. It watches the network, controls it, and reasons about it. That last part is what separates an ADMS from everything that came before it. A SCADA system tells you a breaker is open. An ADMS knows which… Read More: What Is an ADMS? Advanced Distribution Management System »
RabbitMQ is an open source message broker. It sits between the parts of a system that produce data and the parts that consume it, and it moves messages between them. Neither side has to know the other exists. They only need to know the broker. In industrial automation, that role fits a common problem. Plants run a mix… Read More: What Is RabbitMQ? The AMQP Message Broker, Explained »
If you have configured Modbus TCP on a CODESYS PLC, you might expect the same device-tree workflow in Beckhoff TwinCAT. It works differently. Although TwinCAT and CODESYS both implement IEC 61131-3 programming languages, TwinCAT uses Beckhoff’s own runtime and engineering environment. Because of that, Modbus TCP configuration is completely different from what CODESYS users expect — you will… Read More: Modbus TCP on Beckhoff TwinCAT: Client and Server Setup »
Once your MQTT deployment matters — because it carries production telemetry, or controls physical equipment, or supports customers who expect uptime — a single broker becomes a liability. If that one broker fails, the entire system stops moving messages. For deployments where this is unacceptable, you need redundancy: multiple brokers configured so that the failure of any single… Read More: MQTT Broker Redundancy and High Availability: Complete Guide »
CODESYS is the runtime that powers a large chunk of the industrial PLC market — WAGO, Phoenix Contact, ABB, Delta, Eaton, Bosch Rexroth, Turck, and many more all use CODESYS underneath their own branded engineering software. The good news for anyone working with Modbus TCP on these platforms: CODESYS has native Modbus TCP support built in. No third-party… Read More: Modbus TCP on CODESYS PLCs: Step-by-Step Configuration »
Every PLC vendor has its own toolchain, but they largely follow the same programming model. That’s because of IEC 61131-3. It defines the programming languages, the data types, and the software architecture that PLCs and their programming tools are built around. The goal is portability — write logic against the standard, and it should carry across platforms with… Read More: IEC 61131-3: The Complete Guide to PLC Programming Languages »