In a bid to further companies' IT and automation infrastructure integration efforts, communication software supplier Kepware Technologies Inc. has purchased the assets of COI Software Inc., the maker of iSNMP, a software product that facilitates the integration of Ethernet network monitoring and analysis with industrial asset management activities. No purchase price was revealed.
Developed specifically for the industrial controls market, iSNMP (IndustrialSNMP) provides automation engineers a real-time view of their Ethernet network devices, including network traffic volume and network status, from within their existing OPC-compliant HMI software environments, Kepware said.
SNMP, or simple network management protocol, is an Internet protocol commonly used in IT environments by managed devices such as routers, access servers, switches, and other data bridges, which collect and store information and make it available to a network management system. The network management system executes applications that in turn monitor and control the managed devices.
iSNMP originated when COI Software developed communication software to link SNMP-enabled devices with one another, said Roy Kok, vice president of sales and marketing at Kepware, in an interview. As the automation industry began to adopt OPC standards en masse, iSNMP evolved to enable communication between the disparate IT (network monitoring) and automation (asset management) worlds.
According to Craig Resnick, research director at ARC Advisory Group, "As Ethernet devices continue to grow in number and importance on the plant floor, SNMP's importance to manufacturing operations also will grow ... increasingly, SNMP will serve as a foundation for visualization dashboards monitoring production assets and for real-time performance management measures applied to those assets," he said in a statement.
Kepware offers its own range of OPC servers and embedded device communication software designed to work with control systems and other automation systems from an array of vendors, including major automation suppliers Rockwell, Siemens, and Wonderware/Invensys.
Since Kepware is already known for offering hundreds of communication protocols, the addition of network monitoring to the mix was a natural next step, Kok said. Manufacturers beginning to focus on tight control of their network infrastructures are driving demand for this type of technology, he said, because of growing security concerns and other plant floor interoperability initiatives. As such, Kepware will continue to focus on developing products for network infrastructure monitoring applications, he said.
Recent research from ARC contends that, on the whole, users of factory automation and enterprise software are beginning to place a higher value on the information provided by an asset, as opposed to the asset itself. In addition, the research firm predicts that the growing adoption of OPC standards will lead to an increase in demand for HMI software due to its role in the transfer of information from the plant floor to the enterprise.
When OPC (defined by the OPC Foundation as "open connectivity via open standards") was first conceived in the mid-1990s, the benefit was clear for software suppliers who would be able to reduce their expenditures on connectivity efforts and focus more on the core features of the software, according to the foundation. End users, meanwhile, stood to profit from the flexibility to choose software suppliers based on features instead of which device driver the vendor used, and from being freed from having to create and maintain custom interfaces. Even without ever having been christened an official standard, OPC adoption rates have soared and more and more vendors — even archrivals — continue to collaborate on breaking down barriers created by proprietary technology.
"The significance of this acquisition ... is well aligned with the mission and vision of the OPC Foundation for secure, reliable interoperability from the factory floor to the enterprise," Tom Burke, president and executive director of the OPC Foundation, told Managing Automation. "The OPC servers and tools that they are adding further promotes the important interaction in standardization between the control systems of today and the IT systems of tomorrow. Providing significant diagnostic and monitoring tools is all part of the 'getting the most out of your resources' vision that end users are clamoring about in terms of resource utilization and asset management."
Having the necessary network management tools to provide true support for plug-and-play interoperability and maximizing the effective use of technology deployed in both the factory and IT space are basic requirements for many manufacturers, particularly in segments such as consumer electronics, Burke said.
The iSNMP suite consists of the iSNMP OPC Server and a companion product, iSNMP Agent, which allows existing network management tools to monitor data from non-SNMP-enabled PLCs or other data sources, Kepware officials said. The suite is available in Basic and Expert editions. Kepware will sell the iSNMP Expert for $1,995.