Software Toolbox Technical Blog

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 The legacy setup relied on outdated communication methods, introducing inefficiencies and potential failure points.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.

Welcome to the kickoff post of our Data Storage Deep Dive blog series! In this series, we will explore the crucial role of data storage solutions and Historians in industrial automation. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be looking into how solutions delivered by Software Toolbox can be utilized with Historians, helping you make the most of your industrial data.

Though you may have never needed to contact Software Toolbox for support, it’s always smart to be ready for any challenges that might arise. That’s why it’s helpful to know the resources you have at your disposal, should you ever need to connect with our experienced support team to overcome any challenges when using our solutions.

At Software Toolbox, we are committed to providing our users with timely and high-quality responses to their support incidents. While your question or issue might not always be completely resolved after the first response, you can expect to receive our initial response within 2 regular business hours after submitting a question, although it often happens much sooner! We even have some tools that can help speed up this process.

As a part of our Tech Support Corner blog post series, this blog post covers how the OPC Router’s Application Report helps us help you by allowing you to provide much of the information that we need to troubleshoot issues when you initially contact us.