The future of SCADA systems

The future of SCADA systems is linked to ‘company information services’. The overall trend in business is to move all data including SCADA on to HTML format. This will integrate the SCADA system into a complete company wide database. Hardware improvements in the past were overshadowed by better software. This will continue in the future. Companies will use www to access SCADA data from anywhere in the world. This will allow anyone in the company and even beyond to have access to SCADA derived data.

The future of SCADA Software

With the advent of the third party SCADA software package a complete interoperable system has been developed. Hopefully, the number of independent SCADA software companies will increase, unfortunately this has not been the case. It seems that the trend now is for large PLC companies to buy up independent SCADA software companies. This will bring into doubt the true interoperability of software packages such as CITECT, INTELLUTION and WONDERWARE. Without interoperable SCADA software systems, we will see a return to the bad old days of closed proprietary SCADA systems.

The future of SCADA Hardware

On the hardware side of SCADA, improvements in super smart sensors means that we will continue to see a reduction in the price and size of sensors. In addition, the functionality will increase at the same time. Fieldbus systems are becoming easier to set up and use. The move is to have a Fieldbus system that can be setup by almost anyone and is completely plug and play. This also will decrease repair cost and down time because everything will be modular. Super smart sensors allow the user to see problems, by way of the SCADA software, all the way down to the sensor level.

The move to a universal protocol is slow at best and probably will be overshadowed by the use of Ethernet as a common carrier for data. Tunneling as it’s called will continue to grow because of the ease and low cost of Ethernet LAN systems. Systems of the future will use many protocols but each protocol will be imbedded into a 100 MHz Ethernet packet within an OSI compatible system. We will see more use of radio and fiber optic cables for communication. Wire will decrease and eventually disappear altogether, except for powering devices.