There is a conflict between the need for enduring solutions and the continuing evolution of technologies.
Buyers must ensure these solutions are manufactured by vendors who have a strong track record for providing drop-in replacements and support for obsolete products. Without vendor support, technical issues and unforeseeable problems in the system can be hard to fix.
During the development of the PcVue product, we have applied a precise set of rules which improve the expected availability rate of a production system. The rules also help to reduce the total cost of ownership of an installation.
INSTALLATION AVAILABILITY
Investments in digital production systems are planned over periods of 5, 10 or 15 years, or even longer in some cases. The expected availability rates of these systems continue to increase. This factor militates against continuous changes to the systems’ components. The installations’ conditions of operational safety also require thorough testing of their operation and maintenance to attain a timeframe of that order.
ADHERENCE TO STANDARDS
The endurance of solutions depends upon the choices that publishers of basic software tools and methods make so as to maintain a consistent product range. Industrial and economic developments by market participants result in the disappearance of products or systems. So do acquisitions and mergers of the companies that develop them.
ARC Informatique continually monitors the whole technological range of its products. It works in technical partnership with institutions such as the OPC Foundation, BACnet DNP3, IEC user groups or even LonMark International and with software publishers including Microsoft. Thanks to these activities, ARC integrates their evolving standards into its products. That ensures an interworking capability with the other components of the digital transformation.
ACCOMPANYING THE USERS
The demand for improvements in the performance of production equipment makes it necessary to modify installations throughout their life cycles.
The same applies in respect of new regulations for safety, cyber security and environmental protection.
Even more so does it apply where increasingly strict standards of traceability are coming into force in certain branches of industry. When a user wishes it, ARC Informatique can appoint a technical ‘Point of Contact’ to accompany the organization, taking these developments into account and helping to choose among the existing functionalities of PcVue.
This accompaniment can continue until the stage when our technical support is providing ongoing audits and help. The technical ‘Point of Contact’ is also the champion of the user’s needs. That enables us to anticipate market trends for preparing and adjusting our product roadmap, so as to safeguard the functional development of our products.
SOFT MIGRATION
ARC Informatique maintains both current and previous versions of its software packages. This affords time for PcVue users to integrate the most recent versions of our products and to migrate toward new operating systems. Existing applications can also be migrated to virtualized environments with on-premise or cloud hosting.
Some new functionalities are added at the same time to both the current series and the preceding series. This enables users who are keen to stay with a particular version to do so while benefiting from functional advances, then to migrate later on to the latest version of PcVue.
Some versions of our software can be used together within the same client-server network. This enables users to accommodate new applications while keeping the existing ones operational. By this means, the user can plan the rate at which the entire installed base develops according to the financial and practical constraints.
MANAGING CORRECTIONS
Fault reports sometimes arise due to the data processing environment, the technologies used and the context in which the systems evolve. To complement the release procedures for software versions, ARC Informatique sees to the correction of the anomalies or faults noted. Corrections can be provided in ‘patch or ‘Service Pack’ form. This avoids a withdrawal period of months for validation and testing of any particular ‘release’ version of PcVue.
UPWARD COMPATIBILITY
Independently of the technologies and environments on which our products rely, their life cycle also depends on the continuity of our product offering.
Starting with the first versions of PcVue, ARC Informatique has always attempted to guarantee:
– maintenance of product functionalities
– forward compatibility of projects developed on previous versions (possibility of extension beyond N and N+1 versions under certain conditions according to the context and projects)
– migration of historical data files so that they are always usable with new versions of the software.
Our users thus preserve their initial investment in terms of license costs, since only the cost of updates is invoiced, and the cost of applications development based on our product.
OUR SERVICES
For years, ARC Informatique has provided software solutions, our ISO 9001 certification has enabled us to set up a method of quality management setting the client at the center of our processes.
The PcVue training offer allows users to raise their levels of technical capability and to devise a training plan to maintain their expertise and meet their objectives. Audit and help to accompany migration of applications based on our software or that of a solution partner can rely on the know-how of our technical department. We are also strongly committed in maintaining internal competences to guarantee the greatest mastery of different product versions, including over time.
Created on: 7 Jan 2021
