Ignition (Inductive Automation) is a modern SCADA/MES platform built around native OPC UA: it ships one integrated OPC UA Server plus drivers for 60+ protocols (BACnet, Modbus, KNX via gateway, Siemens S7, etc.), a web-based HMI and an MQTT IIoT Pub/Sub engine.
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Ignition is structured around three components. The Gateway is a Java application that hosts the OPC UA Server and the protocol drivers. The Designer is a visual HMI builder. The runtime front-ends are Vision (legacy Java desktop client) and Perspective (modern responsive web and mobile client). An MQTT Engine module implements the Sparkplug B Pub/Sub specification for IIoT. The commercial model licences per module rather than per tag, which is a major difference from legacy SCADAs such as Wonderware: unlimited tags at no extra cost is a strong driver of the platform's fast growth since 2020.
When evaluating Ignition against legacy SCADAs, simulate a 50 000-tag site in the licence calculator first: the per-module model usually wins by a wide margin once tag counts grow, and the savings are easier to justify than feature comparisons.
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Related questions
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