GE Digital Enabling Connected Workers and Centralized Deployment

GE Digital announced the release of new generation iFIX and CIMPLICITY software, its flagship HMI/SCADA applications. Part of the Proficy software portfolio, iFIX 2023 and CIMPLICITY 2023 can help to increase efficiency and accelerate development through native HTML5 HMI, MQTT, centralized deployment, and common portfolio configuration.

Designed to help enable today’s connected worker with more than just traditional HMI functionality, new generation iFIX and CIMPLICITY can help to decrease installation and maintenance efforts using native HTML5 HMI with Proficy Operations Hub. This no-code/low-code environment also is engineered to support easier mobility, more responsive design, added value with modern web functionality, increased security by design, and richer information where and when users need it, on the devices of their choice.

GE Digital’s new native HTML5 graphics designer and lighter weight, scalable runtime are designed to help offer a better, faster way to develop HMI. Companies can help to increase transparency and productivity with a unified operator experience that can more easily combine iFIX or CIMPLICITY with other OT and IT systems, adding information such as PDFs, videos, SQL tables and work orders.

iFIX 2023 and CIMPLICITY 2023 provide a new MQTT5 client that can help to simplify communication and support operations optimization. The new client brings data from smart IoT sensors and devices into the SCADA application and subscribes to MQTT message bus data. Other new features for both iFIX and CIMPLICITY include screen-building accelerators such as auto-binding data and common configuration across the Proficy portfolio.

In addition to new features available in both applications, iFIX 2023 brings innovations that can help to further speed development and increase reliability. These new features include centralized project deployment; a common model across iFIX and GE Digital’s Proficy Historian and Proficy Operations Hub; and TCP/IP-enabled failover that enables failover across networks/sites, supports architectural flexibility, and can help ease disaster recovery.

Additional new features in CIMPLICITY 2023 are designed to help simplify configuration and decrease risk. Features include GE Digital’s Configuration Hub, which allows users to define projects and leverage OPC UA discovery; a common model to which users can publish CIMPLICITY classes/objects for HMI development; and security and high availability enhancements.

Craig Resnick, ARC Advisory Group, commented, “The industrial workforce today can be located both on-site and remote, requires secure connectivity and collaboration tools, is often using mobile handheld and wearable devices with operating systems ranging from Windows to iOS to Android, and wants to be able to configure solutions without requiring extensive programming skills. iFIX 2023 and CIMPLICITY 2023 address each of these requirements ranging from its use of native HTML5 and web-based design to its use of no-code/low-code technology, as well as providing users with low-bandwidth connectivity to an ever-growing number of IIoT sensors often being used for asset monitoring and management via its native use of MQTT technology.”