In the past years, we have witnessed the growing integration between IT (Information Technology) and OT (Operational Technology). Especially in production, industrial automation applications now communicate with the corporate IT network. The reasons for this trend are mainly two:
- The Industry 4.0 paradigm, which is based on the integration of new technological solutions to improve productivity, plant production efficiency and working conditions.
- The need to collect more production data.
However, the Internet of Things is the real enabler that brought these two worlds together. In particular, with its ability to incorporate intelligence and connectivity into smart devices in order to automate processes and collect, receive and send information. This has opened the doors to a universe of new possibilities. Including the integration between IT and OT.
Benefits of web technologies in the OT world
According to experts, this trend is bound to grow. And the next step will be the integration of typical web technologies into SCADA/HMI solutions. A change that will promote numerous benefits for both the user and the developer the product.
Benefits for the user:
- Possibility of using any device featuring a browser, without the need to install any application.
- Automatic management of the size and orientation of the display.
- Possibility to connect multiple display devices (clients) to the device mounted on the machine (server).
- Clients can be connected to the local network or remotely.
- Thanks to web protocols (https or http), you can connect to the machine without changing security policies (firewall).
- Native management of gestures.
Benefits for the builder:
- Finding experienced web programmers is simple.
- Easy development of graphic objects.
- Logic developed in Javascript, a very common and intuitive language.
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