Well… ICC 2017, Transform, is in the books.  After 3 days of sessions, networking, fellowship, food and libation–yours truly and the rest of Team Intellic is pooped.  We had an amazing time with the community and thank Steve Hechtman and the rest of the Inductive Automation team for putting together an awesome conference.  A special shout out goes to our Sales Rep, Vannessa Garcia, for all of her hard work coordinating the various meetings we scheduled with clients, IA staff and other members of the community–thank you!!

My final thoughts:

1. Ignition 8.0 (Perspective) is going to completely change the game… Inductive Automation is working on opening up the entire suite of web browser and mobile functionality to the Ignition Platform… next year, the show is going to sell out in a week… we have been waiting for many years for the announcements we heard from Colby and Carl on Wednesday and we can’t be more excited
2. Security enhancements are coming… and all Ignition developers should start working advanced level security architectures into their projects
3. This was the first show where many of the presentations got down and deep into the details–this is a welcome change and one that will help to drive up attendance in future conferences
4. This was also the first show, since 2013, where so many of the attendees were first-timers.  There are several new Integrators–created in the past few months, from Europe–who made the trek to ICC in hopes of getting guidance building their business models.  I spoke personally with more than 300 of the attendees and was struck by how many were attending for the first time.  This is awesome!
5. OEE 2.0 from Sepasoft and the Azure Injector from Cirrus Link were the two hot-topics of this year’s show.  We’ve had an opportunity to work with both modules in the past month and they are game-changers
   1. Effective development in OEE 2.0 will require a knowledge of object oriented programming (Classes and/or UDT style development) and greatly increases the performance and utility of MES development
   2. Effective development using the Azure Injector will require a knowledge of Azure IOT Hub and Data Lakes.  This new module opens up an entire world of possibility… a fact, I personally feel, has not been realized by most of the community.  I can’t wait to see what people do with Azure Injector over the coming year
6. I’m impressed with how the community continues to develop… the projects get better and this is a good thing for all members of the community.  I am a firm believer that the Ignition market is not a zero-sum game… as more integrators join the community, the existing members of the community all win
7. A lot of folks asked me why is it that Intellic doesn’t present at ICC.  The simple answer is time.  The presenters at ICC dedicate a lot of time putting together useful, top-notch presentations for the community.  Unfortunately, we just have not had any discretionary time to dedicate to such an endeavor.  Like many members of the community, we are growing at a phenomenal pace (400% growth year over year from ’16 – ’17).  In addition, we are currently developing and have released several products to market that require extensive marketing and integration efforts and this chews up a lot of our time.  The good news: we have identified a way where we can contribute to ICC and will dedicate our efforts over the coming year to add to the experience of the show.  Stay tuned…
8. A list of projects and/or products that I found interesting and will definitely work into our development over the coming year
   1. OEE 2.0
   2. Azure Injector
   3. Kepware/PTC Thingworx (proper, and manufacturing apps)
   4. Canary Labs historian
      1. We use this already and would like to see a connector between Ignition and their historian–we may have to develop this ourselves in Q4
   5. Sequential pick list project from Brown Engineering
      1. Powerful functionality for manual assembly and QC processes
   6. 3-D Charts from Perfect Abstractions (awesome, awesome, awesome)
   7. And of course, the full suite of Cirrus Link IIOT modules for Ignition… next year, I predict, the discovery gallery will be overrun with projects that utilize MQTT in some capacity…

ICC is my favorite time of year… and this year did not disappoint.  If I could sum up my thoughts from ICC in just one sentence, it would be…

The future is now!

Blessings,

Walker