Full SOA SCADA Compatibility

Why SOA?

Enterprise architects believe that SOA can help businesses respond more quickly and cost-effectively to the changing market conditions. This style of architecture promotes reuse at the macro (service) level rather than micro levels (eg. objects). It can also simplify interconnection to and usage of existing IT (legacy) assets.

SOA is a design for linking computational resources (principally, applications and data) on demand to achieve the desired results for service consumers (which can be end users or other services). OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) defines SOA as

"Service Oriented Architecture is a paradigm for organizing and utilizing distributed capabilities that may be under the control of different ownership domains. It provides a uniform means to offer, discover, interact with and use capabilities to produce desired effects consistent with measurable preconditions and expectations."

SOA and Business Architecture

One area where SOA has been gaining ground is in its power as a mechanism for defining business services and operating models and thus provide a structure for IT to deliver against the actual business requirements and adapt in a similar way to the business. The purpose of using SOA as a business mapping tool is to ensure that the services created properly represent the business view and are not just what technologists think the business services should be. At the heart of SOA planning is the process of defining architectures for the use of information in support of the business, and the plan for implementing those architectures (Enterprise Architecture Planning by Steven Spewak and Steven Hill). Enterprise Business Architecture should always represent the highest and most dominant architecture. Every service should be created with the intent to bring value to the business in some way and must be traceable back to the business architecture.

SOA growth to soar
Given IT often amounts to half of all new investment for large firms, SOA's promise of increased returns from IT investments creates a huge opportunity. Annual growth rates of 70% are forecast by industry researcher WinterGreen, with the U.S. SOA market soaring from $450 million in 2005 to $18.4 billion by 2012. SOA growth should benefit most of the business technology sector:

• Enterprisesoftware: Gartner expects that most of the growth in application software will be SOA-based by 2010.
• IT services: As clients with problems are always good for business, IDC is projecting that by 2010, global SOA-based services spending will reach $33.8 billion.
• Outsourcing: As SOA services can be sourced internally or externally, it removes another frictional barrier to outsourcing.

The customer survey that CodeFutures conducted in September had hundreds of responses. The reply to the question "Are you currently using/planning to use Web Services/SOA technology in production?" got a 77% positive response rate.

Merrill Lynch surveyed CIOs and found 87% agreed SOA is the "next big thing" in enterprise software.

So, what benefits are they buying?

• Technology benefits: reuse of existing IT assets; quicker development of new software; simplified, integrated, and standardized IT portfolios; and leaner technology departments, organized around processes, not packages.
• Business benefits: create more flexible businesses, supported by streamlined, automated business processes and software services.
• Financial benefits: quicker responses to market changes boost revenue; reuse lowers maintenance and development costs; requires lower total capital invested in IT; and risks reduced by not building software from scratch.

The customer survey that CodeFutures conducted in September had hundreds of responses. The reply to the question "Are you currently using/planning to use Web Services/SOA technology in production?" got a 77% positive response rate.

Merrill Lynch surveyed CIOs and found 87% agreed SOA is the "next big thing" in enterprise software.

SCADA

SCADA is the acronym for Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition. The term refers to a large-scale, distributed measurement (and control) system. SCADA systems are used to monitor or to control chemical, physical or transport processes.

The term SCADA usually refers to a central system that monitors and controls a complete site. The bulk of the site control is actually performed automatically by a Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) or by a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). Host control functions are almost always restricted to basic site over-ride or supervisory level capability.

The HMI/SCADA industry was essentially born out of a need for a user-friendly front-end to a control system containing >programmable logic controllers (PLC). While a PLC does provide automated, pre-programmed control over a process, they are usually distributed across a plant, making it difficult to gather data from them manually. Additionally, the PLC information is usually in a crude user-unfriendly format. The HMI/SCADA gathers information from the PLCs via some form of network, and combines and formats the information. Since the early 1990s, the role of SCADA systems in large civil engineering solutions has changed, requiring them to perform more operations automatically. A sophisticated HMI may also be linked to a database, to provide instant trending, diagnostic data, scheduled maintenance procedures, logistic information, detailed schematics for a particular sensor or machine, and expert-system troubleshooting guides. Since about 1998, virtually all major PLC manufacturers have offered integrated HMI/SCADA systems, many of them using open and non-proprietary communications protocols. Numerous specialized third-party HMI/SCADA packages, offering built-in compatibility with most major PLCs, have also entered the market, allowing mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and technicians to configure HMIs themselves, without the need for a custom-made program written by a software developer. SCADA is popular, due to its compatibility and reliability. It is used in small applications, like controlling the temperature of a room, to large applications, such as the control of nuclear power plants.

Starthis Software

Starthis Software is unique in that is both fully SOA and SCADA compatible, means that connections are faster, more reliable, more secure, easier to manage, and less expensive to maintain. No expensive computer systems are needed to translate and communicate data from PLC's to servers, creating a tremendous cost savings for the factory integrator. PLC's can know be connected without PC's, that need constant updating and maintenance, now it is just a straight connection for faster speed and ease of use.

Starthis provides this essential integration between business systems and plant operations on the same server platform and the same SOA architecture as the other business applications. This creates an efficient, flexible, unified architecture for managing the demand-driven real-time manufacturing enterprise Starthis has the tools to deliver real-time monitoring and reporting to everyone in enterprise who needs timely and accurate data about all the work-in-process on the plant floor. The data can easily be moved into an enterprise database or enterprise application.