Scada systems in 21st century provide ‘information gateway’
The idea of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (Scada) systems dates back to the 1970s when minicomputer-based telemetry systems were deployed to look after oil pipelines and widely distributed remote assets of water and power industry resources.
The term Scada was first applied in the mid 1990s to a new class of PC-based software systems that had emerged following the introduction of the personal computer in the early 1980s.
Convinced that the PC would replace traditional control equipment such as programmable controllers and multiple loop process controllers, the early enthusiasts pitched their products as combination controller and human-machine interface (HMI) packages. They were largely defeated by a combination of the PC’s shaky, slow performance and the efforts of the traditional control manufacturers, who staunchly defended their markets with improved controllers and fast, inexpensive HMIs.
By the time of the mid 1990s, the climate for industrial PC packages had progressed. Faster Pentium processors combined with the much easier to use Windows operating system made PCs more attractive, and the increased use of Ethernet on the factory floor made connecting to third party equipment less complicated. Even some Windows-based industrial standards, such as OPC (OLE for Process Control) had begun to emerge, which would help bridge the gap between PCs and the control equipment they wanted to supervise.
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