Highlighting Titanium Control in the industrial automation market

Written by Harry Forbes, Research Director at ARC, the paper explains why the industrial control systems (ICS) that automate production equipment in today’s factories and plants can also represent a formidable barrier to modernisation and flexibility.

Automation systems evolve at the rate of Operational Technology (OT) rather than Information Technology (IT), creating challenges around maintenance, upgrades, support and safety.

Forbes contrasts the slow evolution of industrial automation systems with the rapid progress in IT systems, which are driven by technologies such as system virtualisation and cloud computing, as well as the integration of software development and deployment (DevOps).

He highlights the work of the Open Process Automation Forum, an effort initiated by ExxonMobil in 2016, and discusses industrial control products such as the “Industrial Internet Control System” (IICS) solution introduced by GE in 2017.

Describing the business benefits of virtualisation for ICS, the report stated: “The benefits of greater ICS virtualisation for end users are clear. Lower TCO, longer ICS life, fewer disruptive changes, improved ability to manage change and implement continuous improvement. The result (and the largest payoff) comes in the form of improved operations”.

In a summary of potential disruptors in the industrial automation market, Forbes highlighted Wind River’s Titanium Control platform, explaining that: “An excellent example is Wind River’s Titanium Control platform, which combines Wind River’s long experience in real-time operating systems with extensive low latency virtualisation and on-premise cloud computing technology that has been proven in mission critical applications.”

This is why Wind River has seen tremendous customer interest in the Titanium Control platform since launching the product early in 2017.

You can download the ARC Advisory paper here.

Courtesy of Wind River.