P4A MD Paul Hurst and MMI solutions MD Dennis Price were causing some consternation at the Drives & Controls exhibition held at the NEC last week, by asking visitors the question “Are you paying too much for your SCADA?” the answer it seems is a resounding ‘Yes!’
Both Paul and Dennis are intent on transforming the SCADA software market in the UK by breaking what they see as an unfair price premium being paid currently for SCADA software and integrator support. Everyone it seems who was questioned at the show, and many that offered their opinion having seen the banner on the exhibition stand and on the company website at www.products4automation.com agreed – many citing examples of far lower quoted prices in other European markets.
The cure for this market imbalance is being supplied via an exclusive sales, distribution and support deal with leading Italian market SCADA provider Progea. Not previously available in the UK the Progea product is branded as Movicon 11 SCADA, the package costs on average 50% less than equivalent systems from competitive suppliers, whilst offering comparable or superior levels of functionality, scaleability and connectivity.
“To date SCADA systems have been more expensive in the UK than anywhere else; restricted licences, rising development costs and yearly system integrator fees all add up to mean that SCADA as a whole hasn’t been a great deal for UK buyers,” comments Paul Hurst. “We booked the exhibition stand at Drives & Controls with the intent of delivering a bold statement, and ruffle some feathers because we know we can back that statement up, and supply a genuine alternative without the premium cost, we now offer users of mainstream SCADA systems all the functionality of their existing systems, but at a price on average 50% less. What’s more we are offering unlimited free development licences for users and system integrators and asking the question; are you paying too much for your SCADA?”
With no legacy code platform (unlike some other well-known market players) Movicon™ 11 is the only SCADA/HMI platform completely based on XML and Web Services technologies, Vista XP CE and soon WINDOWS 7 making configuration easier and quicker than any comparable product. The openness and flexibility of the Movicon™ architecture makes it the perfect SCADA/HMI supervision solution for modern applications, and is easily applied to any sector that employs a basic level of automation.
Movicon™ 11 also provides integrated connectivity at the Web level, its innovative architecture is based on JAVA (Integrating easily with XML, SVG, Web Services technologies), allowing server access using internet browsers in any platform (Windows™, Linux, Palm, PocketPC and Javaphones telephones (thanks to J2ME). Servers can be both Windows™ Vista/XP and Windows™ CE.
Movicon™ 11 has many improvements over legacy SCADA products but two specific advantages are the implementation of an “open database” enabling the user to specify the form of data storage e.g SQL, mySQL, etc. and secondly the inclusion of a full report generator, negating the need for a separate add on historian or reporting package often costing thousands of pound each.
