Let's take a look now at the architecture
of the PI System through a typical single site,
and then later on we'll look at multiple sites. So we'll go across
a whole organization. So, we'll start here
over in the, I guess the most far-flung
geographical area with the data sources. We'll take a look at
the Control Network, the DMZ. We'll explain what that is and then take
a look at how this is served up in the
Client Applications. Now let me switch
over now to our slides,
and I'll start, as I said, by looking at these data sources.
Now the data sources would be those things in the field that
we're collecting data from, and if we look
specifically at things like Pumps, Valves, etc., you know, these --
Temperature Transmitters,
Pressure Sensors, etc.,
Flow Meters -- these are the things that are
physically connected to the equipment that you're
using. And in the case of things like SCADA Systems
you would have the connections
to transformers, to the different pieces of equipment out in the field
for transmission and distribution of those things that you
manage. Now, those data sources generally
are connected to some kind of a control
system, whether those be programmable logic
controllers, their controllers' SCADA System
or distributed control system, and that's part of what
we're calling here The Manufacturing Control Network.
That would be the highly secure area of your network
in which you don't want anybody but authorized
users. This is where you open and close valves. You can actually
do things to your plant. So obviously you only want the most
secure, you know, trusted individuals
who have access to that. Now compare that to this
DMZ. DMZ stands for, well, it's an old,
old military term, Demilitarized Zone.
It's also sometimes known as the Data Management Zone, or Demarcation
Zone, or simply just a perimeter network.
It's, the, the concept is, it's an area in your
network, it's usually a sub-network, a logical area,
or sometimes physically a different network, in which
you're going to take those pieces of information that are
generated back here in your highly secure
network, and you're going to expose them in a very careful
measured way to the outside world, to the
unsecured network, generally the Internet. So,
you need to do that very well with, you know, good firewalls in between
so that, so that nothing happens out here,
you know, in the Wild West here, can actually get
in and do anything on your, your
Manufacturing Control Network. And that's what the DMZ does, and that's
generally where you're going to find the PI System,
the interface nodes, etc. Those are going to be
in your, typically will be in your DMZ.
Now, once we have that data
on the PI Server, we can do analysis to it. This is what we
do with our Analytics Tools, things like our
Notifications, our Advanced Computing Engine,
Calculations, Notifications, Statistical Quality Control,
Trends.
Those are types of things that, that people are going to be
using to make some sense out of
all that data that you're bringing in. So we have good
Analytics Tools for that and, of course, the big finish is
once you've got information that's useful, that's
actionable, that will actually improve things in manufacturing,
you want to show it to people. So, again, typically
through another firewall, you will find access
to that data is done through the Client Applications,
either our rich client or smart client applications like
PI ProcessBook and PI DataLink and others. Also,
through thin clients like the RtWebParts
or other, you know, web-based
applications, like, for example, the
applications that support the SAP Portal
technology. RtWebParts, by the way, you may know as
PI WebParts, and typically the location of
this is going to be out on the Corporate LAN or actually completely
out on the Internet. Using good credentials piggybacking
on Windows Security you can
expose this to people in a way that's secure
even if they're sitting at home or in an airport. So far
we've been discussing just a single PI System
on a single site. But, remember, this is meant to be
an enterprise application, and what we typically find
is you'll have many, many different sites involved in this so
this might be one PI Site, this over here is another PI
Site, we've got a third PI Site down here, and all of
these things can be wrapped up, to be looked at,
in genera, across the entire organization
using those same PI technologies
that get the data, you know, from, on a local
level here, from the data sources to the
users. We can use that same technology to
collect that data into these Enterprise Servers and
then serve that data out to end-users
like you see here. The end-users can,
or excuse me, through the technologies
of our SDK and our API and our OLE
DB Application, we can also share that data to
other devices in other systems that require
real-time information. So, for example,
if you do have a business system that requires
this real-time data, odds are we've got a
mechanism, either through our OLE DB Provider or some
other interfacing, we have some mechanism for you to get the data
in, all the way from the shop-room floor, into
that business system. And, of course, we support all the other
technologies for getting this data out to people through
portal servers, mobile clients, wireless connections, etc.
I don't think this picture would be complete
if we didn't mention that in addition to
getting all the data from
manufacturing and bringing it to the users who need it, well,
these systems themselves, these enterprise systems,
they do consume a lot of resources
and we do have tools for monitoring those resources.
So it's not unusual at all to see a
customer who's using PI for monitoring his manufacturing
process also use PI in his
Data Center so that he can monitor things like
heat or energy, etc., so he can better
run his Data Center. In addition, he can reach out and
grab Windows Performance Counters, SNMP
data, network traffic, routing
information, etc., from his Network, bring that into
PI with a unique set of Analysis Tools that can
get down to the, practically to the sub-second level,
no averaging necessary here,
and do troubleshooting for his internal
resources, his, his server farms,
his networks, etc.