Held Hostage By A Vendor

Rockwell SCADA software is very expensive. and if this includes their customizations on it that is not an unusually high price.

They (third-party Rockwell Engineering) gave me the option of doing it my self or having them do it. I chose to have them do it considering this ran the pumps for the whole towns water supply and also prevented overflows.

Carnival Boy

I remember a few years ago we needed some customisation or other and the vendor quoted a day's labour at around $1000. I sent the order over and less than an hour later I got a reply from the programmer saying he'd completed the work. I was like "you could at least have pretended it took you over an hour to make me feel better!"

Anyway, we're in the same point with some software to run our testing machines. The program apparently needs re-writing to support Windows 7 and that quote runs in to tens of thousands as well. I think we're going to stick with XP.

garak0410

Thanks for the insight...so, we really to invest in one of these options and perhaps I can make an image of the new machines and use that for Disaster Recovery?

scottalanmiller

@garak0410 said:

Thanks for the insight...so, we really to invest in one of these options and perhaps I can make an image of the new machines and use that for Disaster Recovery?

That's a good idea. Try virtualizing too (P2V) to see what your options are.

thanksajdotcom

I don't know if their claims of complexity are overly-exaggerated or not, but it sounds like what they are charging you for is the labor of their engineers. Without knowing the software and your environment/setup, I can't comment on whether that seems steep, but everything a business gets charged for is a much higher rate than it probably should be.

Bill Kindle

@garak0410 said:

When it comes to Engineering and manufacturing software, it's not typically something you want to become responsible for. If they offer, let them have it. Deflects blame from you to them. Since the software is custom, I wouldn't touch it even if I could.

coliver

@Bill-Kindle said:

@garak0410 said:

When it comes to Engineering and manufacturing software, it's not typically something you want to become responsible for. If they offer, let them have it. Deflects blame from you to them. Since the software is custom, I wouldn't touch it even if I could.

I'd have to agree with this. We have a few PLCs that are super finicky and have no interface for support. Whenever something comes up we have to call our vendor or manufacturer (a Swiss company) to get them fixed.

scottalanmiller

@coliver Welcome to the community!!

Dashrender

We were looking at this same issue a few months ago - we lucked out and a technician did the upgrade to our new machine, though I'm pretty sure he wasn't suppose to.

I was always told no support was offered on PLC/SCADA stuff if we did it our selfs. The upgrade from them usually comes with 1-3 year support. going cheaply in this area when they can control so much just may cost you your job if something goes wrong.