The next generation of Software Defined Automation's cloud-centered Industrial DevOps and OT security solution for automation engineering provides manufacturers with a comprehensive solution for managing their industrial automation devices—programmable logic controllers (PLCs), robotics controllers, and industrial drives—at scale.
DETROIT, May 12, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- At Automate 2025 Software Defined Automation announced the next generation of its cloud-centered Industrial DevOps and OT security solution for automation engineering. The new release provides manufacturers with a comprehensive solution for managing their industrial automation devices, including programmable logic controllers (PLCs), robotics controllers, and industrial drives, at scale.
Empowering users with a seamless OT experience
Software Defined Automation's platform delivers an improved operational technology experience built for speed, simplicity, and scalability. From faster deployments to streamlined onboarding of users and devices, every aspect of the platform is designed to reduce complexity and accelerate time to value. Intuitive workflows and flexible organization models allow teams to manage devices, projects, and pipelines with ease—making it easy to scale from one site to hundreds. The result is a more approachable, more efficient automation environment that empowers teams to focus less on setup and more on execution.
"Our users often have thousands to tens of thousands of industrial controllers. They need to understand their manufacturing code holistically and manage the access rights across all industrial compute assets. Working with elite customers across the globe we see that traditional PLC programming, backups, and code management is decades behind IT DevOps," said Dr. Josef Waltl, Founder and CEO, Software Defined Automation Inc. "Together with our customers we are on a mission to provide automation engineers the tools they deserve. We are now adding the means to manage industrial control devices at a very large scale that is simple, cost-effective, and can be rolled out in a matter of days."
Advanced security adds new layer of protection for PLCs
With cyberattacks on the rise across the manufacturing industry, there is a growing need to better protect a factory's core intellectual property (IP), including PLC and robot programs. Software Defined Automation's Security Hub enables secure credential storage for PLC devices and projects as well as automated credential rotation.
Software Defined Automation now also offers custom roles that allow administrators to define policies by asset type, action, document, and project and associate those policies with specific users or roles. By making the assignment of permissions consistent and repeatable, organizations reduce risk, improve efficiency, and easily scale governance.
New pipeline, version control, and automated backup capabilities enable modern Industrial DevOps
Automation engineers are now enabled to perform bulk actions for hundreds of industrial controllers at once. Complex backup, deployment, and disaster recovery workflows are orchestrated through pipelines, a common concept in IT DevOps. Multiple pipelines can run in parallel across different device vendors, eliminating the heavy lifting and shifting for automation engineers.
Software Defined Automation's new platform introduces enhanced pipeline deployments supporting complex automation scenarios, including large-scale fleet deployments. With this capability, users can seamlessly deploy a single PLC program across hundreds of Siemens and CODESYS PLCs. This is especially valuable for fleet-based applications, such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), and other distributed automation devices, simplifying updates and ensuring consistency at scale.
Libraries make it easy to reuse modules or function blocks at scale where a standardized library is deployed to controllers with individual configurations. This streamlines code updates and reduces engineers' manual tasks. Additionally, all types of documentation files can be independently versioned and linked to different types of resources and devices.
Software Defined Automation's automated backup has been enhanced with PLC device snapshots and SFTP backups, allowing organizations to fully restore all configurations when there is an update or incident.
Comprehensive support for multi-vendor environments meets customer demand
Software Defined Automation continues to extend its support for industrial automation device manufacturers and now covers B&R Automation Studio versions 3.0.90, 4.12, 4.2, SEW‑EURODRIVE MOVISUITE versions 2.20, 2.31, 2.40, 2.51, and 2.60, and Siemens TIA Portal version 20. Users of igus robots can program, simulate, and download updates to its Robot Control software directly to a robot so it can run side-by-side with its digital twin to optimize operations and foster innovation.
Availability
A private preview will be available to select customers. Customers who would like to participate in the private preview can register their interest at www.softwaredefinedautomation.io/preview.
About Software Defined Automation
Founded by manufacturing, industrial software, and cloud experts, Software Defined Automation envisions a future where PLC management and development is simple, secure, and efficient, so that factories can increase uptime, reduce mean time to recover, and maximize the productivity of their assets. The company is headquartered in Boston with offices in Munich, Germany. For more information, visit www.softwaredefinedautomation.io.
Media Contact
Hilary Ives, Software Defined Automation, 1 339-234-6929, [email protected], www.softwaredefinedautomation.io
SOURCE Software Defined Automation
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