Check out some of the highlights from Intellicast’s interview with Founder & CEO of Tatsoft! We discussed FactoryStudio powered by FrameworX and how it relates to Industry 4.0!
Transcript:
Q: So what do you think it takes to be a successful software company?
Marc Taccolini:
There are very large automation groups out there, and of course you can’t go in chewing on their entire business model. I’m what you might call an old-style software company founder — very passionate and very focused on solving a specific class of problems.
In our case, it’s real-time data management and visualization. And if you put that passion into a specific niche — whatever that niche is — you’ll be successful. The very large players often have five to ten thousand product lines in their portfolio. Innovation in software has always come from smaller companies with patience and a strong desire to solve specific problems. And that’s what I’ve been doing with FactoryStudio.
Walker Reynolds:
Everyone who watches the podcast hears me drop FactoryStudio all the time as a best-in-class solution. In our opinion, it’s essentially Ignition built on .NET — that’s what I always say.
Long term, we envision FactoryStudio being the data hub in most enterprises. In Industry 4.0 and IIoT applications, we envision a Unified Namespace, where all hardware, all software, and all users are both consumers and publishers of data. And we see FactoryStudio as that namespace engine in the middle.
One major advantage I talk about is longevity. Since it’s .NET-based, the same version I run on my Windows 10 machine can run all the way back to XP Service Pack 3, and also on Linux. The .NET platform gives you that portability.
Marc Taccolini:
Exactly. We also have both server-side components and client-side components. Sometimes people ask, “What about new web standards like HTML5 and JavaScript?”
We support HTML5 and JavaScript — but on the client side.
For the server side, the Microsoft/.NET platform is incredibly powerful, robust, and stable. That’s where we rely on .NET heavily. People sometimes misunderstand and think everything is HTML5 — but the server side is where .NET really shines.
Walker Reynolds:
Walker says all the time that FactoryStudio is blisteringly fast because it’s built on .NET — and it really is. It’s web-server-centric, where clients can run either as HTML5 or native apps.
And you guys also have native apps, right?
Marc Taccolini:
Yes — we have native apps for iPhones and iPads. So clients can run on basically any operating system, except that the native app is specifically for iOS.
We’re already on version 8.1, so we’re a little ahead of the game.
Walker Reynolds:
The advantage of .NET for me — and I’m not a .NET developer, I’m a Python guy — is how FactoryStudio uses IntelliSense.
Power users can browse:
- all available scripting methods
- all .NET libraries
- all DLLs
- all tag objects
One of the most powerful aspects of FactoryStudio is that tags are actual objects. Everything is an object. Devices are objects. The system is completely browsable. You can discover objects through IntelliSense and see what properties and methods they expose.
What’s amazing is that you’re not just developing inside FactoryStudio — everything you could do in Visual Studio, writing a custom .NET application, you can do inside FactoryStudio because it exposes the same libraries and tooling.
Marc Taccolini:
Sounds like you like FactoryStudio.
Walker Reynolds:
I really do.
People ask me why FactoryStudio stands out, and there are three main reasons:
1. It’s native .NET and a truly all-in-one platform.
It’s the most bleeding-edge platform on the market where you build one single application and run it everywhere — HMI, SCADA, mobile, browser, whatever. I don’t have to build separate visualizations.
2. It’s blisteringly fast.
And I can’t overstate that. Most SCADA systems struggle with high-resolution updates — especially with fast calculations or lots of objects.
FactoryStudio eliminates that problem.
We’ve seen visual updates of 10 to 100 cycles per second on the screen. The reason is simple: it’s built on .NET and it’s close to the motherboard — no extra layers.
3. It’s completely open.
It’s wide open for developers.
- Want to develop database-driven?
- Want to develop purely tag-driven?
- Want MQTT / Sparkplug / asset-model-driven?
- Want to write everything custom in .NET?
- C#?
- Python?
- Mix and match everything?
You can.
That’s the future of the industry:
a platform that places no restrictions on the developer’s creativity or toolset.
And FactoryStudio is that platform.