This should be grist to the mill of countless software developers in the industry. After all, microservice-based app containers on real-time Linux are becoming a big hit here. And now many companies, whose managers previously tended to rely on Microsoft, are being forced to find another solution within a short space of time.
The Windows and Linux logos on my screen (photo Sendler)
Make or buy
With open real-time Linux and a little experience, you can build your own operating system for embedded software. This makes you completely independent. But it costs a certain amount of man-days and a bit of expertise, which is not an option for every company given the already rather severe shortage of experts.
Of course, you can leave this task to external programmers. But even then, the costs are not negligible. In addition, most people will probably ask themselves how sensible it is to use development capacities to build and maintain an operating system that is very similar or identical in its basic features for most companies. After all, the big advantage of Linux is that it is a standard operating system that is continuously being developed by a huge developer community worldwide.
And this is where the platforms come into play, which have been forming their own market for completely new automation solutions for around ten years. They are all based on real-time Linux, in some cases even as an open operating system that automation specialists can also use for their own devices and controllers in return for a license. With the certainty that if a change of provider is necessary, the basic features of the microservice architecture guarantee simple porting of the company’s own software and devices.
These open automation platforms have major differences. Not all of them support other open systems such as CODESYS; not all of them can be used for third-party hardware against a license; not all of them offer the same scope of application fields for which apps are provided – to name just a few of the key differences.
Status of the Smart Automation market overview before SPS 2024 with three exclusive subpages (highlighted in green). (Photo Sendler).
Bosch Rexroth with ctrlX AUTOMATION, Contact Software with Elements for IoT, FLECS Technologies with FLECS, German Edge Cloud with ONCITE DPS, KEBA AG with Kemro X, Lenze with Lenze NUPANO, Phoenix Contact with PLCnext Technology, SALZ Automation with SALZ Controller, Siemens with Industrial Operations X, TTTech Industrial Automation AG with Nerve, WAGO with WAGO OS and WAGO ctrlX OS, and Weidmüller with easyConnect / u-OS.
The first major difference: two of them, Contact Software and Siemens, come from the IT sector and offer the platform as part of their large enterprise software systems.
Contact Software is a well-known provider of PLM software that has converted its system to a new architecture over the last ten years. Contact Software is not a manufacturing automation company. Perhaps this is why their customer event Open World 2024 is taking place at the same time as SPS, where Contact is the only one from the market overview who is not represented.
Siemens is also an automation specialist and has an enormous customer base with its Simatic controllers and the TIA portal for production engineering. However, even after several years of integration, the automation solutions here are still more or less isolated solutions alongside the PLM and MES software, and the new platform only appears to be open to a limited extent.
Automation redefined
The other ten providers are automation providers. But even here, there are major differences and varying degrees of interconnectedness. Overall, the openness of the platforms is likely to lead to ecosystems increasingly meshing and overlapping. This is because it is in the nature of microservice architectures that not everyone has to invent everything themselves.
For example, several of the providers (such as Lenze, SALZ, WAGO and Weidmüller) use parts of the FLECS Technologies offering, which in turn enables white labeling for the operating system, app store (FLECS’ “marketplace”) and infrastructure and has made this its main business model. In addition to automation companies, numerous machine manufacturers also use their platform. Founded in 2021, the startup is already a well-known name in the field of Industry 4.0 and open automation.
TTTech Industrial Automation (TTTech Industrial subpage for market overview) was founded in 2019 specifically to offer the open, Linux-based platform Nerve. Although hardware is also available, it only accounts for a small proportion of the overall business. Incidentally, a sister company of TTTech Industrial recently launched another automation platform, Ubique.
SALZ Automation was also only founded in 2021, but positions itself as an all-round automation provider with hardware and software and uses several locations worldwide for its hardware production. KEBA Industrial offers a comprehensive hardware and software platform under the name Kemro X and has no particular focus on software.
In recent years, a fundamental change to open, microservice-based architecture has taken place here.
Bosch Rexroth (see Bosch Rexroth subpage for market overview) has probably come furthest with its own positioning as a comprehensive provider of the open automation solution ctrlX AUTOMATION with a fairly fast-growing and extensive ecosystem and a network of well-known partners in the ctrlX World. WAGO was one of the first partners to rely directly on ctrlX OS for their devices.
Update on the SPS 2024
German Edge Cloud (GEC subpage for market overview) was founded in 2021 as a company of the Friedhelm Loh Group. Its ONCITE Digital Production System (DPS) software platform provided the core of the smart factory for the construction of a new Rittal plant in Haiger. This plant is now an Industry 4.0 showcase plant. However, the platform is also in productive use at other customers such as Porsche and Schuler’s Smart Press Shop.
The number of such platforms continues to grow. I recently heard from an industrial company that currently has 23 platforms in its selection. I hope to get more information and get to know more platforms at SPS Smart Production Solutions from November 12 to 14 in Nuremberg. After all, this trade fair – alongside the major industrial trade fair in Hanover – is currently probably the most important meeting place for an annual get-together of platform providers.
The SPS should also be of great interest to embedded software developers. The new things that the young specialists are looking for and want to create themselves, the alternative to the old monolithic and Windows-based stuff, i.e. the apps of composable software – here they will find plenty of material to connect to, use and copy. See you around.