New cloud-based solutions bring speed and feline agility to unlock the power of manufacturing data
Historically, manufacturing data has been gridlocked, trapped in the devices, or the applications where it was created. “Today, owners of that data want to be a cheetah, a business cheetah,” said Brian Shepherd, senior vice president of software and control at Rockwell Automation. In the current global climate, a business cheetah needs to be able to pivot with speed and agility, he says, which is why the world’s largest company, dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation, is introducing its latest cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. The new suite of cloud-based SaaS products is part of the FactoryTalk Design Hub software, which provides on-demand design tools. SaaS delivers software via a licencing and delivery model, whereby hardware and infrastructure are centrally hosted. Users subscribe and receive the benefits of the software on-demand over the web, freeing themselves from large upfront investment and ongoing hardware and infrastructure maintenance. SaaS solutions were developed in partnership with Microsoft on the Azure platform to help business to digitally transform with confidence using the cloud. “The cloud is tried and tested. It’s proven,” Shepherd said. “SaaS in the cloud provides the speed and agility that customers are looking for to meet their key business outcomes. The cloud enables those business outcomes by changing the way you work,” said Shepherd. The cloud can also accelerate time-to-value and reduce the need for expensive on-site experts and teams for deployments, patching, and upgrades. “That’s good, because you can’t find those people anyway.” Adopting the cloud also eliminates large upfront purchases for hardware and software licenses. “You can start small and scale up fast,” Shepherd said. “That’s real agility. You can scale back down as business conditions change.” There’s no question that the cloud is here to stay. We see what cloud computing is capable of and […]