Inductive’s ICC event levels up

It can seem like Ignition web-based, HMI/SCADA software is everywhere, but the latest proof was the record-breaking attendance of 1,529 visitors at Inductive Automation’s 13th annual Inductive Community Conference 2025 on Sept. 16-18. After more than a decade at the Harris Center for the Arts at Folsom Community College, ICC gained some much-needed elbow room at the 240,000-sq-ft Safe Credit Union Convention Center in downtown Sacramento, which let it expand about 50% beyond the approximately 1,000 visitors ICC usually draws.

This year’s ICC also featured keynote addresses and updates, 34 technical and related sessions, 34 exhibitors, seven Firebrand Award winners, Discovery Gallery presentations, and its traditional Build-a-Thon competition, pitting two teams against each other to develop the best SCADA/HMI application in just 16 hours. This agility is proving crucial for modernizing interfaces and controls in process and other industries.

“The old, rigid paradigm of equipment, PLCs, and SCADA, MES and ERP systems each living in their own layer has unnecessary limits and costs that stifle interoperability and innovation. It’s also collapsing because it can’t keep up and handle modern industrial operations,” says Colby Clegg, CEO at Inductive Automation. “The new paradigm we’ve been working on for the last 10 years functions largely outside of these traditional layers, and connects information and its locations into a more unified system with a common foundation and a coherent platform for converging OT and IT users.”

More flexible, capable realm

This new platform organizes control, HMI, SCADA, ERP and MES function into an overall integration platform, and organizes field, industrial and business data into an aggregation platform. Clegg reports that Inductive’s newly released Ignition 8.3 software also supports this new paradigm, and enables beyond its SCADA/HMI functions to unify IT and OT data sources, and apply more flexible software applications, many developed by system integrators and other Ignition users.

“This platform-based paradigm and Ignition 8.3 lets users keep up with adding new innovations and gaining new capabilities without having to build them from scratch when they show up. With Ignition 8.3 and its ecosystem and community, we’re confident they’re in the best position to create solutions together.”

Building on its traditional unlimited-license model that makes Ignition simple to deploy, Inductive introduced several new options and initiatives at ICC that will help users acquire the tools and capabilities they need. These modular solutions include:

• Ignition Solution Suites that are curated sets of Ignition modules organized around specific use cases, which are easier to deploy and freely upgradable. The five initial suites are application building, industrial historian, data ops, alarm management and enterprise integration.
• Ignition Technology Ecosystem program that enables about 40 related suppliers and their connectors, cloud-based tools, analytics platforms, cybersecurity and other products to easily plug into Ignition and its user community.
• Sixteen exhibitor-led presentations developed by Inductive and the ProveIt! organization, which lets participants use its unified namespace (UNS) to demonstrate real-time, Industry 4.0 integrations and solutions, which are supported by Ignition and fueled by live data from ProveIt!’s virtual factory.
• Integrator Solutions program of highlighting production-ready tools developed by Inductive’s gold and premier system integrator partners. These include Corso Systems’ Conversion Utility for migrating to Ignition from legacy systems; BW Design Group’s AI Perspective Builder chatbot for completing Ignition projects by turning requirements into screen layouts more quickly: Vertech’s Solar Project that visualizes KPIs, optimizes power generation, and maintain unified control across multiple assets; Avadine’s Ignition Pump-Off Controller (iPOC) is a lift-optimization solution that captures surface and down-hole data, and enables operator-directed control; and Flexware Innovation’s Spark MES provides 10 software packages to deliver real-time production insights.

Firebrand Award winners

Further demonstrations of Ignition’s flexibility were provided by ICC 2025’s Firebrand award winners.

ASE Global helped the two-site Galapagos project establish the world’s largest shrimp feed production facility in Guayaquil, Ecuador. This aquaculture company needed a modern, centralized system to ensure reliability, efficiency and operational visibility for its two facilities, which must be able to process 160 tons per hour. ASE delivered a scalable, Ignition-based, Python-programmed solution that unified production management, batch control and monitoring, created a standard platform to meet current requirements, and expand to future local and international sites.

Concera developed an abnormal situation management (ASM) SCADA platform in Ignition to replace legacy SCADA systems at metals producer Sibanye-Stillwater’s platinum facility in Rustenburg, South Africa. The new SCADA encompasses three vertical shafts, 10 air compressors, and various utility areas to enable efficient operation of the system, as well as remote viewing of data and screens from multiple locations.

Insight Engineering developed a specialized, low-code, tag-less application called Specpro for Haymes Paint’s project specification documents, which previously used different templates, and lacked traceability, an internal specifier or a formal approval process. Specpro automates, tracks, standardizes and validates specifications with an intuitive interface, which reduces the time and expense of generating specifications, and clearly indicating a project’s risk factors.

The U.S. Dept. of Energy’s (DoE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is using Ignition to make sure research can proceed safely and efficiently, apply different voltages and frequencies in its labs, prevent dangerous power feedbacks, and manage customized recipes more quicky and safely at its Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF). Researchers use ESIF’s plug-and-play infrastructure to connect electrical, thermal and hydrogen systems across 18 laboratories to create forward-thinking energy scenarios that are secure and reliable.

Sage Automation, replaced an aging SCADA, historian and airport management system (AMS) at Sydney Airport with a secure, scalable, unified, intuitive, Ignition-based solution that integrated more than 630 field devices, improves operational visibility and cybersecurity, achieved cutover with no downtime, and integrated with the airport’s Microsoft Azure cloud-computing system.

Nick Minchin, senior system engineer at Sage Automation, received the Community Impact Firebrand Award for more than 10 years of applying Ignition at his company, developing solutions and solving challenges on live Ignition projects, and otherwise mentoring colleagues worldwide via the Inductive Automation (AI) Forum. During this time, Sage grew from having two Ignition developers to supporting about 90 with Ignition experience.

HebronSoft IT Academy for underprivileged or orphaned youth won the Educational Engagement Firebrand Award for employing Ignition dashboards and Arduino-driven muscle sensors to train a 3D-printed hand prosthesis. Their non-profit project sought to alleviate critical gaps faced by individuals who have lost limbs due to war or trauma, and counteract the muscle atrophy and other effects of the lengthy waiting periods they often experience before receiving permanent prostheses.

SGA wins Build-a-Thon

In its usual, dramatic demonstration of Ignition in action, ICC was capped off by its Build-a-Thon event. The initial competition took 27 system integrators through 10 challenges and tests, producing two finalists: BW Design Group and Safegroup Automation (SGA). Just prior to ICC’s closing day, they were given 16 hours over two days to develop an Ignition SCADA/HMI application for a three-tank, three-color anodizing process for large, souvenir coins designed and equipped by Opto 22, which also included a payload hoist, conveyor motor, touch pads, linear encoder and other parts (Figure 1). 

The interfaces developed by the two teams let users choose recipes for different colors or combinations, and initiate outputs, positions and power to execute those steps. They integrated account management, device firewalls, and virtual private networks (VPN) for cybersecurity. They accomplished these and other tasks by using Ignition Edge software to pull device tags into their SCADA/HMI application, and used Ignition Design software to make user-defined data type (UDT) templates that could publish to an broker, function in the unified namespace (UNS) for their machines and other equipment, and show performance results, analytics and other data via Ignition Perspective software on Opto 22’s groov EPIC controllers and other networked displays. The teams also used GitLab’s AI-powered, DevSecOps platform to publish files in a local server’s development environment, push programmed variables and validated changes to the anodizing application’s production environment, and use MQTT to submit orders to the queue.

Following each team’s presentation, the ICC audience cast their virtual ballots, and SGA won with 77% of the vote, earning the Build-a-Thon’s coveted orange sportscoats.