Is Dragos trying to be a commoditized solution that ends up being similar to Rockwell or Siemens. Is Dragos really positioned to be an equal.... Usually you need a great new product to take on IGNITION or ROCKWELL. We have been virtualizing the SCADA side for quite a while but this would not work well on a remote skid or machine that needs fast scans of I/O that is PLC or PC territory that resides locally. For example when you do check-weigh at high speed even a PLC is too slow to do that so you need a local "PC based PLC". So that leave the slower process systems that can be scanned every second or so... There is a place for virtualized systems... PLC's may not be the push-over that Dragos believes. I appreciate advancement and open systems... not sure that is what I'm seeing here. I applaud your candor and open mindedness and moving the ball in that direction.
Applying the word commodity to a Rockwell product will make them bristle at the thought, then they will laugh, because of the thoughts below. The cost range of a good well executed control system being between 100 and 500k is not going to go away for large manufacturers because the cost of these is well justified in terms of reliability, personnel availability with skills, and the infamous support of Rockwell. Siemens is infamous too, but in a different way, LOL. The majority of cost of a hardware these days is the IO, how will that be virtualized? Virtualizing a 2000-6000 dollar processor is interesting, but not justifiable. Remember Vsphere servers arent cheap either. Another large part of a delivered control system, is the programming labor, where will that be eliminated. I think this is a solution looking for a problem, just like Plant Floor data was in the 90s, 21cfr was in the 2000s, IoT was in the 2kteens, and AI is today. Maybe we could virtualize the Salesmen, CEOs, Directors, and Project Managers, that would be useful. BTW, we call Project Managers, Artificial intelligence behind their backs.
Is Dragos trying to be a commoditized solution that ends up being similar to Rockwell or Siemens. Is Dragos really positioned to be an equal.... Usually you need a great new product to take on IGNITION or ROCKWELL. We have been virtualizing the SCADA side for quite a while but this would not work well on a remote skid or machine that needs fast scans of I/O that is PLC or PC territory that resides locally. For example when you do check-weigh at high speed even a PLC is too slow to do that so you need a local "PC based PLC". So that leave the slower process systems that can be scanned every second or so... There is a place for virtualized systems... PLC's may not be the push-over that Dragos believes. I appreciate advancement and open systems... not sure that is what I'm seeing here. I applaud your candor and open mindedness and moving the ball in that direction.
Applying the word commodity to a Rockwell product will make them bristle at the thought, then they will laugh, because of the thoughts below. The cost range of a good well executed control system being between 100 and 500k is not going to go away for large manufacturers because the cost of these is well justified in terms of reliability, personnel availability with skills, and the infamous support of Rockwell. Siemens is infamous too, but in a different way, LOL. The majority of cost of a hardware these days is the IO, how will that be virtualized? Virtualizing a 2000-6000 dollar processor is interesting, but not justifiable. Remember Vsphere servers arent cheap either. Another large part of a delivered control system, is the programming labor, where will that be eliminated. I think this is a solution looking for a problem, just like Plant Floor data was in the 90s, 21cfr was in the 2000s, IoT was in the 2kteens, and AI is today. Maybe we could virtualize the Salesmen, CEOs, Directors, and Project Managers, that would be useful. BTW, we call Project Managers, Artificial intelligence behind their backs.
I´ve virtualized a beckhoff industrial pc just to test new software in the lab, it was never installed at the plant.