Best paid support among SCADA vendors

Dear Control Specialists,

I would discuss in detail about their experience with the paid support of different SCADA vendors. Also I would also like to give their rating against the quality of support they are offering.

Personally I had a bad experience with iGlobalcare from GE FANUC (intellution) for their iFix and iHistorian products.

I had raised many a issues/requirements for iFix SCADA version 3.5 and iHistorian but I would rate their response as POOR in terms of timely reply and customer satisfaction. They were not able to give us the required solution on time and meeting our specific requirements making us to rethink to switch over to other SCADA vendors.

How would you all rate the paid support of other vendors like Wonderware, Citect, ICONICS, etc.?

I guess I am not all that surprised about your support experience on these products after GE took over. I went to look up something on their website not too long ago and found that you had to pay just to access the web site.

Intellution had very fine tech support. It's sad to see it go like this. But, that is the new business model for these things, and we are just going to have to get used to it.

OTOH, since we were an Intellution VAR, when GE took over they sent us licenses for Cimplicity as well when we renewed our Fix VAR status. GE giveth, GE taketh away.

I am still waiting to see what GE does to merge the Cimplicity products with the Fix products. I can't imagine they will leave them as seperate products for long. The MBAs that run GE no doubt look at it as duplication of effort, and want to have just one development staff rather than two. Which brings up the point of why bother to buy Fix if you are just going to close it down in a few years? So who knwos what they will do with it.

Hi,

It all depends on what country you are in.

I have found Wonderware (in the UK Pantek) to be very good and timely. It takes a little while for the questions to get to the right person, but at least they have an understanding of severity. When the right person is on the taks, they are first class.

Rockwell, are good and have specified timings to get back to you and esclation etc. Their Milton Keynes (uk) office have these metrics dispayed which is great.

Siemens, interesting... UK i found to be average but when i got through to their technical people in Germany they were great.

It always help to have a good knowledge of the relevant product so that the questions and disucussions can be focussed otherwise Tech support will have you checking the On/OFF button rather than getting to the issue.

Support is as good as the local representation is. If the local rep or distributer has invested in a technical support group then the support is usually good. My plant in Texas enjoys great support from our local Wonderware distributer.

In the global competition, major thrust is given only to marketing & technical support is given probably 2 nd last prioririty. you frequently have change of staff in this department & this invariably lead to unstable operation from the company, regarding genuine technical support.

Modern corporate policy is, end user have to develop technical support team within themselves since the cost of ownership lies with end user.

Only solution to this kind of issue is, be self dependent or develop local distributor & keep his interest alive for continuous business.

Paid technical support is always wastage of Money.

Jari
[email protected]

I'll bet they wish they had maintained their UNIX Cimplicity product. Now they are without options as the bloat continues.

Regards

cww

Dear Mr Jayaharan

If you are in India and u need any help in any of your Intellution products, please feel free to contact us at sarla technologies, it would be a pleasure to help you out in any way we can. our website is http://www.sarltech.com

shinu

GE Fanuc technical support is horrible. Told me the wrong things, made promises that never came through.

Bob,

You may have seen from the GE website that they have decided to integrate both the Cimplicity and Intellution products under the banner of a Proficy product along with the Machine Edition product.

There is Proficy - HMI/SCADA Cimplicity and Proficy - HMI/SCADA iFix. Honestly, I am more familiar with the Machine Edition and Cimplicity side but integrating these under one name seems to indicate that that plan to make these products work with each other more closely. The support of iHistorian in recent Cimplicity releases may be a way that GE will gradually blur the lines between Cimplicity and iFix.

I am using support from Imperious Technology... and these guys are simply good at their work.

Visit Sarlatech.com for Proficy support in India and Middle East.

As far as GE/Intellution goes... I use to work for Total Control Products, and GE butchered that wonderful company as well.

I've extensively used ICONICS and Wonderware, and I would put the support from ICONICS as being a bit better than WW. Mainly the response time - WW just takes too long to return calls, where ICONICS is very prompt.

CH