Over the past couple of weeks various people approached me with this question and I have not been able to answer it. I'd like the experienced people in this group to share the advantages that Ovation SCADA has over the competitors. By the way, I did a search on the web and found a Delta V versus SCADA/PLC configuration, but it is 10 years old. A lot has changed in that time. It will be great to know what is relevant to customers today. Thanks.
Michael Eksteen | MEA
Hi Michael – I think stating a generic comparison against “competitors” could possibly be misleading. It is a broad position to take, and assumes an exhaustive understanding of all SCADA platforms. That said, we do believe there are some inherent advantages with the Ovation SCADA solution:
- Many systems have requirements for local control as well as typical “SCADA” functionality, such as a waste treatment plant that also monitor remote lift stations. In these situations, it is much better to have a single system (i.e. Ovation) at the head-end rather than having separate control and SCADA systems. Since the Ovation SCADA Server allows SCADA capability to be added to an existing Ovation system, it is relatively easy to do.
- The distributed nature of our system allows system capacity to be expanded by adding multiple SCADA Servers, rather than requiring a single (i.e. very large) server to perform all SCADA tasks. Most SCADA systems utilize a single server to perform the data communications to the field as well as to service requests from MMI workstations for data and, in some cases, perform historical data archiving. Based on our distributed architecture, these functions can be distributed to multiple machines for large systems or combined on a single machine for small systems.
- Also, because of the distributed nature of the Ovation system, the SCADA server performance is not affected by the number of operator workstations (MMIs) on the system. In a typical SCADA system, the SCADA Server that is performing remote communications also has to service requests from MMI clients for current data values. As the number of MMIs increase, the load on the SCADA Server also increases. This is not the case with Ovation. Since Ovation broadcasts its live data to all workstations, there is no difference in load on the SCADA Server between having a single MMI and having a hundred MMIs.
- Since the Historian function can be hosted on a separate machine, client requests for historical data also do not impact the performance of the SCADA server.