Software Toolbox Technical Blog

While security and ease of project execution are often the focus when discussing remote configuration, they’re just the beginning. In this post for our 2025 Environmental Sustainability blog series, we’re highlighting the environmental benefits as well. Embracing remote configuration not only helps reduce emissions—it also enhances efficiency, sparks innovation, and supports long-term resilience for your business and the planet.

One of the most valuable lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic is that remote work can significantly reduce a company’s carbon emissions and overall environmental footprint. While individuals often concentrate on minimizing their direct emissions, businesses have the potential to drive far greater impact by addressing emissions at scale. True corporate sustainability requires a holistic approach—one that considers the full lifecycle of every product, process, and operation. Software Toolbox offers several secure remote configuration options to help you achieve sustainability goals—featuring solutions like OPC Server Remote Configuration Client, Cogent DataHub, and OPC Router.

When it comes to Earth Day, conversations often center on renewable energy and reducing raw materials—but true sustainability goes far beyond solar panels and recycling bins. One of the most overlooked yet powerful ways to shrink our environmental footprint is by reclaiming something we already have in abundance: waste heat.  

In this second installment of our 2025 Environmental Sustainability blog series, we’re diving into the surprisingly diverse world of heat reclamation—where compost piles, underground aquifers, industrial processes, and even your HVAC system can all become unexpected sources of clean, efficient energy.  

Curious about how this is so? Read on to discover the technologies that turn excess heat into big savings—for both the planet and your wallet.

A global beverage manufacturer sought to modernize its data workflows by integrating operational technology (OT) with enterprise systems. Specifically, they needed to transfer real-time data from their Rockwell Automation PLCs to their SAP system to automate workflows, enhance traceability, and streamline processes. The legacy setup relied on outdated communication methods, introducing inefficiencies and potential failure points. To overcome these challenges, the company required a robust, scalable, and future-ready solution.

This blog will give you an insight into how that solution became a reality and how they got there. Also, if you have not done so, please subscribe to our blogs to not miss out on similar topics.

Streamline Operations, Improve Visibility, Enable Compliance, and Drive Success

In the highly regulated and fast-paced oil and gas industry, leveraging real-time, secure data is crucial for improving operational efficiency, ensuring safety, and meeting regulatory compliance standards. Software Toolbox delivers software solutions designed to enable data integration that is a must for the applications you use to monitor, manage, streamline and optimize operations across all sectors of the oil and gas value chain. Our solutions deliver the critical data you need, whether you're in upstream exploration, midstream pipeline management, or downstream refining.

Read the rest of the blog to learn how we can help drive your operations forward.

Welcome back to our Data Storage Deep Dive series! In our previous post, we demonstrated how Cogent DataHub can integrate with AVEVA PI System to push data to CONNECT Data Services. However, with CONNECT, getting data in seems to be the easy part. What if you need to get data out and are unsure of what options are available?

With support for RESTful connections, OPC Router is capable of interpreting OMF from CONNECT and can seamlessly integrate that data with OPC UA, SAP, SQL, MQTT, REST, InfluxDB, and more, enabling users to have a successful Industry 4.0 implementation.

Risk is often defined as the likelihood that something will occur multiplied by the impact it would have. In the world of automation, some of those possible impacts are unexpected downtime, loss of data, theft of information, damage to people and products, and inaccurate data – not to mention the fines and penalties when government regulations are not met.

At Software Toolbox, we understand that data availability, integrity, and confidentiality are of the utmost importance. As the adoption of IIoT grows, so does network exposure, increasing the likelihood of potential security issues. Implementing safe protocols and practices are essential to mitigating these risks.

In today’s industrial environments, securing and streamlining data communication is essential. If you're not familiar with OPC Router, it’s a powerful software solution that integrates various industrial, business, and IoT data sources. With its drag-and-drop visual workflows, scalable configuration templates, and platform-independent browser-based interface, OPC Router helps you connect systems quickly and efficiently.

When combined with Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), OPC Router gains enhanced security and user management features, making it ideal for modern industrial setups. But how do you deploy this combination in a modern environment like a Docker container?

In this blog post, we’ll break down the concepts of Docker and Entra ID and guide you through implementing them in your OPC Router system. But before diving into the specifics, it’s important to understand the foundational terms.

Welcome back to our Data Storage Deep Dive series, where we have been exploring the possibilities of integrating our variety of industrial automation software solutions with historians to allow for a deeper understanding of trends within your data. In our previous installment, Software Toolbox Helps You Fly Higher with Canary Historian, we demonstrated how TOP Server, OmniServer and DataHub can collect data from unique sources with different communication needs to Canary Data Historian for aggregation and analysis. Today, we are going to look at how OPC Router can be used to extract the historical data and expose it in an intuitive format for any OPC UA Client to consume.