This does make an interesting conversation considering the issue of equipment cost vs fieldbus limitations which is very common in PLC environments - for example, max amount of concurrent sockets open on the PLC per manufacturer spec on MODBUS/TCP applications in contrast to something like NODERED on a computer or cloud environment with its own theoretical limitations -. On the side of security, I still do believe that in most cases a dedicated PLC will still make more sense than running a computer with virtualized software just to have power on hand when and if needed. You do not install packages or start services on a cloud or on premise servers just for the sake of having them. It’s a bad security practice why is also not common in commercial or industrial systems. PLC dedicated software also provides the user with closed architectures that just for this fact, can be more secure. Even when speaking of Network Security Appliances, I still don’t know of an engineer that believes that a virtual box firewall is better than hardware particularly designed for this job. If on the other hand manufacturers are looking to develope environments (Industrial OSs) that could run on third party server packages (thinking here of something like DELL, HP, etc), then for me this makes more sense. You would still need though, peripheral cards to provide I/O capability to the system, while ending again with the PLC requirement which begs to question. Are computers and PLCs really different? I for sure do think they are. I do agree that the supply chain problem requires manufacturers to provide the industry with novel solutions. Looking forward to see where this approach takes us LFE
PLCs are just computers, right? Computers with access to real-world I/O devices and data. So why not turn a high-power PC into a virtual #PLC? Siemens is the latest company with this revolutionary idea. https://bit.ly/3qzOwcu
