Challenge: Consolidate multi-site energy operations with heterogeneous equipment and multiple protocols, preserving local autonomy (history, alarms, synoptic) while enabling a unified corporate view (Energy Center), with high availability and point/tag scale.
Specific pain points:
Integration of multiple vendors and legacy interfaces (OPC DA) in a distributed topology.
Lack of a central view and standardized alarms/history across areas.
Need for redundancy and fault tolerance (servers, network, clients).
Impact: Slow responses to energy events, engineering rework, and higher operational risk due to fragmented data.
Example: “Without a unified central network, the energy team had to manually correlate events and histories across areas, increasing MTTR.”
FrameworX Editions
Areas: FrameworX Edge/Enterprise Site with history, alarms, synoptic, and local drivers.
Center: FrameworX Enterprise consolidating all areas.
Clients: SmartClient & WebAssembly/HTML5 for operations and engineering.
Historian/Alarms: Standardized per area and replicated/untouched at the center.
Communications: Drivers for Altus, GE, Siemens, Rockwell, OPC DA (legacy) and TCP/IP/Serial channels; recommend OPC UA where applicable.
Scale: 30k+ points; per-area synoptic; server redundancy at the center and in critical areas; multiple concurrent clients.
[Operational Areas (15+)] [Energy Center] |
Layer | Component | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
Area | FrameworX Site | Acquisition, history, alarms, HMI | Independent local operation; standardized models |
Transport | TCP/IP, Serial | Telemetry and control | Network segmentation; QoS; serial/IP gateways |
Central | FrameworX Enterprise | Consolidation, orchestration, APIs | Cross-area normalization; corporate dashboards |
Data | Historian/DB | Corporate repository | Retention/partitioning strategy |
Clients | SmartClient/WebAssembly | Operations & engineering | Multiple concurrent clients |
Segmentation by area and VLANs; redundant links where critical; TLS encryption for inter-site traffic.
Gateways for serial↔IP conversion (RS-485/RS-232) and secure tunneling.
Central: Cluster/HA for real-time services, history, and alarms; database with tested backup/restore.
Areas: Independent operation; store-and-forward for network resilience; automatic reintegration.
Drivers/Interfaces: Altus, GE, Siemens, Rockwell, OPC DA (legacy) and OPC UA (recommended) + serial/TCP drivers.
Channels: TCP/IP and serial (RS-232/RS-485 per equipment).
Active areas: 15+
Total points: 30,000+
Legacy OPC DA; gateways/proxies; DB connectors for corporate BI; APIs for maintenance/assets.
Industrial multiprotocol (native drivers + OPC DA/UA)
Covers a heterogeneous ecosystem without heavy middleware.
Distributed solutions (Area/Central/Clients) with independent updates
Reduces maintenance windows and enables controlled rollback.
Standardized History and Alarms
Common model across areas; simplifies corporate KPIs/SLAs.
WebAssembly/HTML5 + SmartClient
Scalable operations and corporate access without fixed thin-client dependencies.
Enterprise redundancy (HA) and store-and-forward
Business continuity and data consistency under network/host failures.
Why wasn’t this trivial on other platforms?
Combination of broad multiprotocol coverage, distributed/independent deployment, unified alarms/history model, and corporate HA at 30k+ points.
Consolidated 15+ plant operations into a single Energy Center managing 30,000+ data points across heterogeneous equipment (Altus, GE, Siemens, Rockwell), eliminating manual event correlation and significantly reducing Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
Achieved zero data loss during network disruptions through store-and-forward mechanisms and redundant server architecture, ensuring continuous operations with automatic failover and data reintegration
Standardized historical data and alarms across all areas while preserving local operational autonomy, enabling accurate corporate KPI tracking and real-time decision making through unified dashboards
Reduced engineering overhead and operational risk by implementing a distributed architecture that allows independent area updates without system-wide maintenance windows, while providing simultaneous multi-user access via SmartClient and WebAssembly interfaces