MQTT modules link Ignition software directly to IIoT

“I’d been waiting 17 years for a solution like Ignition -- I needed this piece to make all this come together." Arlen Nipper, co-inventor of MQTT and president of Cirrus Link.

Inductive Automation announced the upcoming release of Cirrus Link MQTT Modules for Inductive's Ignition software platform for human-machine interface (HMI) and supervisory control & data acquisition (SCADA) applications.

The new modules — MQTT Engine^,MQTT Injector, and MQTT Distributor — are the result of a new partnership between Cirrus Link and Inductive Automation, and are designed to accelerate organizations’ ability to leverage the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Arlen Nipper, president of Cirrus Link, is the co-inventor of Message Queueing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), an extremely lightweight pub/sub messaging transport that’s perfectly suited to the IIoT. MQTT provides fast, bi-directional communication in a very simple manner, so it requires minimal network bandwidth. The new Cirrus Link MQTT Modules for Ignition can connect hundreds of devices in just minutes.

“I’d been waiting 17 years for a solution like Ignition,” said Nipper. “I needed this piece to make all this come together. Now we’ve got a complete solution that is much, much faster than anything else.” Nipper co-invented MQTT in conjunction with Andy Stanford Clark of IBM specifically for real-time, mission-critical SCADA systems. Now its greatest potential can be realized for the IIoT in conjunction with Ignition.

“This new solution gets crucial operational data to the people who need it,” added Don Pearson, chief strategy officer at Inductive Automation. “It uses MQTT to easily push data from thousands of devices across numerous sites to one central location. From there, managers can get just the data they need, when they need it, to make better decisions. In many industrial organizations, huge amounts of data are stranded in data silos. MQTT with Ignition actually decouples devices from applications, making data much more available — to everyone from the field or the plant floor to the top floor.”

“As soon as you couple a device to an application, you’ve killed innovation,” said Nipper. “You don’t have the flexibility you need to realize the full potential of the IIoT. With MQTT and Ignition decoupling things, you have unprecedented flexibility and speed.”

The Cirrus Link MQTT Modules for Ignition will be available for purchase beginning February 24, 2016. On that date, Inductive Automation will conduct a webinar to introduce the details of the newly released product.

“MQTT’s simple, lightweight messaging protocol helps IIoT deliver real value to manufacturers,” said Craig Resnick, vice president of ARC Advisory Group. “MQTT provides connectivity from simple assets, enabling flexible, automated ‘plug & play’ production solutions that address manufacturers’ biggest challenges, such as ever shorter product life cycles, increasing product personalization, and growing cost pressures.”