Front Runners: Meet the Solution Providers Who Work in the Field with Wonderware Distributors and Customers Worldwide

In this issue, we interview Tony Johnson, Project Manager for Thales' Enterprise Services division. Thales is a Registered Value Added Reseller (VAR) in the Wonderware® Solution Provider Program and keeps a Wonderware Certified Application Developer on staff.

Thales is one of the many organizations that contribute to the successful operation of the London Underground. It provides configuration services and a standardized system for the sub-surface lines of 150 stations connected to the Bakerloo, Central, District and Victoria lines. Thales selected Wonderware's SCADA Software Solution because of the Wonderware software's outstanding ability to connect new and legacy systems.

How did Wonderware software help you win the London Underground contract?

Tony Johnson: In order to win the contract, we had to put forward a COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) solution that was flexible and would enable us to cover an on-going project over approximately 30 years. The longevity and support that Wonderware could provide fitted the bill. Wonderware's distributed application gave us the facilities to provide the networked solution to our customers that they sought.

How has the Wonderware software solution helped you stay within your budget on the project?

Tony Johnson: We had a fixed budget to do this project. The actual cost of the Wonderware software fitted within that budget, and we've worked with Wonderware to make sure that that's been an on-going situation that can be addressed on a year-by-year basis.

Certain features within the Wonderware software have enabled us to automate quite a bit of the software production so that we can repeat what we've developed. We spent a lot of money on the initial development and we can repeat that usage over the 150 stations.

Why did you to select Wonderware for this particular project?

Tony Johnson: I think that there were two main features at the start of the project that attracted us to Wonderware. First is the fact that the Application Server had a template-based structure, which gave us the idea that we would be able to re-use what we've developed on the first station or on the generic solution across the rest of the stations.

We were also aware of the Galaxy Repository Access Toolkit that has enabled us to automate the production of our database. This has saved us time on the production of each station database, and that has proven to be invaluable to us.

In 2001, we attended some workshops and sessions at Wonderware's headquarters in California. We spent some time evaluating the products and compared them with competitive offerings. We came to the conclusion that the Wonderware SCADA Software Solution would be the best fit for this project.

You mentioned that Wonderware software has helped Thales save significant engineering time and money. Can you tell us more about that?

Tony Johnson: Here's a good example. Because the software enables us to re-use our engineering, we now have a station rollout process whereby we can receive data from a customer and, approximately 6 weeks after we've received that data, we're in a position to perform the factory acceptance tests with the customer. When we've done it by other, more traditional means, it's very likely we'd have spent that amount of time producing the initial database without going into the testing and verification phase.

Have your customers seen any lifecycle benefits now that you use Wonderware software?

Tony Johnson: Our customers can reap the benefits of Wonderware's on-going development and verification process against new operating systems, for example. We can provide upgrades to the system using new releases that Wonderware provides and tests. This should be of great benefit to our customers.

What can you say about feature enhancements?

Tony Johnson: Wonderware has been quite accommodating when we request new features to be added to their products. Wonderware records them as change requests that will be provided in future releases of the product.

What does Wonderware offer that its competitors don't?

Tony Johnson: There are several reasons why we decided Wonderware was the best fit. It was quite a lengthy exercise of evaluating different aspects of SCADA products against each other. I think the main benefit came from the template structure that Wonderware was adopting, which we haven't seen in any of its competitors, and that probably gave it the edge.