Future of FTHistorian?

[tlf30]

I noticed that the new FTHistorian 9 only uses the PI 2018 still, and is not updated to 2023 yet. I figured by now any new releases would have done the upgrade.
I know that AVEVA does not want to support the old site and perpetual licenses anymore, so any new licenses are with the flex credits and that is the only way to get PI 2023. I am wondering if FTHistorian will forever be stuck on PI 2018 and no longer get new feature releases, only security patches.

Thoughts?

 

[cardosocea]

Rockwell will move away from it, but will adopt the SaaS principle. i was in a presentation from them and they were demo-ing a product to aggregate data from Historians and I believe ASEM (makers of Optix) probably have something.

OSI PI going down the rental path is a shame... I'm a devoted fanboy of OSI PI, but not to the point of paying subscription for that product.

This is a good thing though... market is ripe for some disruption and all they have to offer is a perpetual license. Companies are playing a dangerous game that will pull the carpet from under them.

That same presentation day form Rockwell was hilarious... first presentation of the day "cyber security", where they focused (really well too) on cyber security and how we need to clamp down everything, monitor the PLC key switch, any changes made, etc...

Second presentation of the day? You can now program PLCs from the cloud with our FactoryTalkHub.com...

I was laughing in the front row and I think the presenter understood why too... but marketing department will... marketeer???

Edit: From that presentation there were some interesting points... the words Linux and Grafana were brought in as valuable solutions they will support.

 

[dummy_bit]

That same presentation day form Rockwell was hilarious... first presentation of the day "cyber security", where they focused (really well too) on cyber security and how we need to clamp down everything, monitor the PLC key switch, any changes made, etc...

Second presentation of the day? You can now program PLCs from the cloud with our FactoryTalkHub.com...

I was laughing in the front row and I think the presenter understood why too... but marketing department will... marketeer???

You are definitely not the only one laughing. Merging IT/OT is a huge mistake.

 

[robertmee]

I noticed that the new FTHistorian 9 only uses the PI 2018 still, and is not updated to 2023 yet. I figured by now any new releases would have done the upgrade.
I know that AVEVA does not want to support the old site and perpetual licenses anymore, so any new licenses are with the flex credits and that is the only way to get PI 2023. I am wondering if FTHistorian will forever be stuck on PI 2018 and no longer get new feature releases, only security patches.

Thoughts?

IMO, Aveva is a dead product. Intouch through Schneider and now Aveva is just wonderware with an IDE wrapper...the basic design hasn't changed since 2012. Aveva is so buggy now, it's a pain to use. Cross Reference, updated use counts, etc are broken and work half the time.

My customers are split between running 2014 r2 as long as they can or migrating to Ignition. Schneider 2017, Aveva 2020 and 2023 are dog ****, and I see no future innovation or even effort to fix the issues they have. They're milking their customer base for as long as they can.

 

[tlf30]

The last company I was at was installing a new 2023 system. We had meetings with AVEVA dev team twice a week for hotfix handoff. They are making large improvements to 2023. I would not call it a dead product by any means.
BUT: Since purchasing PI, they have made no efforts to fix anything related to PI. Simply rebranding and pushing their cloud based DataHub. We had given them a large list of issues that needed to be fixed to move the project forward, and the PI side had no interest in doing any work to the product.

At Automation Fair last year I was in a talk about the new RA cloud programming. They tried to tell us it would replace Studio 5000, and we told them that we would in turn replace all the RA hardware. The poor guy was an engineer told to give us a presentation on it, but he himself thought it was a terrible idea. I guess this is what happens when marketing looses sight of their customers.

Speaking of cloud, I'm currently working on a project with the 1756 Embedded Compute Module and Optix. I would tell everyone not to bother with it yet. The whole platform is designed around cloud. I cannot even upgrade the firmware without using the cloud software, or plugging a USB into the module. It is a very immature product at this point that is far too cloud focused to be usable yet.

 

[cardosocea]

You are definitely not the only one laughing. Merging IT/OT is a huge mistake.

The problem is that typically, IT is closer to upper management than OT... many, many IT managers will be fired on the spot in the coming years due to sheer arrogance of thinking they understand everything with an RJ45 on it.
You should see the face of people in the cybersecurity committee when I gave them the red line of any SIS system will only communicate through RS-485 Modbus if and only if the device can't be programmed through that serial interface.

I guess this is what happens when marketing looses sight of their customers.

This hasn't stopped Rockwell before...
I still remember way back in the day when GE told me that their newest iFix had to be permanently connected to the internet for licensing and their face when I told them the meeting ended and we'll be making a departure from GE products as they're clearly not competent in the products they sell. Sure enough, 30 seconds later iFix didn't have to be connected to the internet. LOL

 

[tlf30]

Yeah, it is crazy how everyone (IT and the vendors) all want everything internet connected. I just cannot fathom it. I've had to explain to managers before why we could not move iFIX (we called it "iBroke uFIX") servers to AWS. Companies keep pushing cloud first and it will eventually cost them.