LAKE FOREST, CA — Wonderware yesterday breathed new life into its 20-year-old InTouch human-machine interface software product, rolling out a major new release that includes a centralized, easy-to-use platform for modeling, developing, and changing plant floor applications as well as a centralized platform for managing, securing, and updating InTouch applications.
The enhancements — InTouch version 10.0 and System Platform 3.0 — will allow InTouch to serve as a common visualization platform for a variety of real-time, plant-centric application types, including HMI/SCADA and MES, Wonderware officials said.
"InTouch 10 is a visualization engine for all types of applications," said Mike Bradley, president of Wonderware, a unit of Invensys. "HMI, MES, and data historians are getting collapsed into a single real-time manufacturing software layer, and this announcement is part of that trend."
The InTouch upgrade, more than two years in development, puts to rest recent rumors that the InTouch system was on the road to retirement, Wonderware officials said.
"Competitors have been saying that, with ArchestrA, InTouch is dead," said Wonderware Marketing Vice President Mark Davidson. "Sorry, but that's not what we did. InTouch continues to be our HMI offering going forward."
The enhancements also enable users of the 10.0 version to deploy InTouch on Microsoft's Vista operating system, a change that allows InTouch applications to scale across multiple hardware processors rather than being limited to a single tag server. With version 10.0, InTouch applications can also be deployed on mobile panel computers running Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.0 operating system. That will enable manufacturers to deploy InTouch HMI applications at a lower cost, Wonderware officials said.
Many of the new InTouch enhancements are enabled through the application of technology from ArchestrA, Wonderware's next-generation service-oriented architecture and Microsoft .NET technologies. The new Wonderware Development Studio in the InTouch 10.0 release, for example, is based on the ArchestrA integrated development environment. And the new System Platform 3.0 product allows InTouch applications to make use of the ArchestrA application server as well as the data historian and Web portal, which is based on Microsoft's SharePoint Services product.
Most significant among the 200 enhancements to InTouch 10.0 is the new object-oriented Wonderware Development Studio feature, which lets developers create plant visualization applications in a simple, drag-and-drop fashion and to create and reuse templates that incorporate application logic and graphics. Those templates, stored in a central repository, can be reused and shared by a variety of Wonderware application types, including MES, data historians, and HMIs. Developers can create their own automation templates, use a library of 500 templates developed by Wonderware, or use other objects such as .NET Controls from Microsoft. Wonderware is also developing industry-specific templates, beginning with ones for companies in the wastewater management industry, said Niels Andersen, Wonderware's director of business development for HMI/SCADA.
The new Development Studio feature supports new graphic types, such as vector graphics. It also supports a wide range of industry-standard technologies — such as OPC, XML, SQL, and SAP NetWeaver — that can be used to integrate visualization applications with other types of applications.
The Development Studio feature includes new collaboration capabilities — such as check-in, checkout, and version control — that can be used by teams of developers working on the same project.
While existing InTouch applications can be stored in and managed through the Development Studio repository, customers will need to upgrade to the 10.0 version and System Platform 3.0 to take advantage of the new object-oriented development paradigm, Wonderware officials said.
Wonderware said it is offering discounts for existing customers that upgrade their InTouch licenses to the 10.0 version and purchase System Platform 3.0. The company did not say how much the discount is, nor did it provide pricing on the new InTouch and System Platform versions.
The 3.0 release of System Platform also provides manufacturers with new options for deploying InTouch applications. A ViewEngine component, borrowed from ArchestrA, allows users to deploy, manage, and change InTouch applications remotely over a network.
Wonderware's next step, according to Bradley, will be to incorporate many of the same ArchestrA-enabled features into Factelligence, the MES software product that Wonderware acquired in July along with Cimnet Inc. Bradley did not provide a timeline for that integration.
Wonderware officials said they expect a significant percentage of current InTouch customers to upgrade to the 10.0 release quickly. Davidson said 125,000 licensed customers upgraded to the 9.5 version of InTouch in the first 15 months. "We hope to exceed that," he said.