Ignition, FactoryTalk and AVEVA are all capable. On most sites the right choice is set by the installed PLC base, the legacy SCADA already running and the in-house support skills, not by a feature checklist.
Ignition uses a server-based unlimited licence, while FactoryTalk and AVEVA have historically used per-display, per-client or per-tag models. The difference matters most as client and tag counts grow.
Browser-based clients and native MQTT and Sparkplug support favour greenfield and multi-site IIoT projects. Established Rockwell or Wonderware estates often favour staying on the platform the team already runs.
Choosing a SCADA platform is a decision most Australian manufacturers make once a decade and live with, so it is worth getting past the marketing and onto the engineering. The three platform families on most Australian sites are Ignition by Inductive Automation, Rockwell FactoryTalk, and AVEVA, which covers Wonderware InTouch, AVEVA System Platform and AVEVA Plant SCADA, the product formerly known as Citect. Metromotion Controls delivers SCADA projects on all three across Melbourne, Victoria and Australia, and this comparison is written to help you choose the right platform for your site rather than to favour one product.
This post supports our PLC, SCADA and HMI programming service, where SCADA platform selection, new builds, historian and reporting, and legacy SCADA migration all sit.
Each name covers a family rather than a single product, so it pays to be precise about what is being compared.
A server-based, platform-agnostic SCADA with browser clients through Perspective and a thick client through Vision. Native MQTT and Sparkplug, a built-in historian, and the Sepasoft MES and Batch modules extend it into the data and batch layers.
Rockwell Automation's SCADA and HMI line: FactoryTalk View SE for distributed supervisory systems, View ME for machine-level HMIs on PanelView, and FactoryTalk Optix for web-based visualisation. Tightest integration is with the Allen-Bradley controller estate.
Wonderware InTouch, now AVEVA InTouch HMI, as the long-running HMI product; AVEVA System Platform as the object-based architecture on the ArchestrA model; and AVEVA Plant SCADA as the current name for the former Citect, widely deployed across Australian process and utility sites.
The decision is rarely a clean choice between three products. It is usually a choice between staying on a family already installed and moving to a different one, and that distinction shapes everything below.
Licensing is where the three differ most, and the difference is structural before it touches price. Inductive Automation licenses Ignition on a server basis it describes as unlimited licensing: a single server licence does not cap tags, clients, screens or device connections, so the practical limit becomes the server hardware and network rather than the licence. FactoryTalk and AVEVA have historically used per-display, per-client or per-tag models, where adding operator stations or expanding the tag count adds licence cost.
Compare the licensing model against the shape of the system, not as a headline number. On a small, fixed-size system a per-unit model can be competitive; on a site with many workstations and large tag counts, the server-based model usually wins as the system grows. All three are quote-based in Australia and terms change, so confirm current pricing with each vendor at the time of decision.
Ignition runs from a central gateway that polls PLCs directly, and scales out through Edge gateways publishing over MQTT and Sparkplug to a central gateway. That pattern suits multi-area and multi-site deployments where a Unified Namespace is the goal.
AVEVA System Platform is built on the object-based ArchestrA model, where the plant is modelled as reusable templates and objects within a Galaxy and deployed to Application Server engines. The object model is a real strength on large, repeatable process environments, because a change to a template propagates to every instance. AVEVA Plant SCADA is a mature distributed architecture proven on large tag-count process and utility systems across Australia.
FactoryTalk View SE is a distributed architecture of HMI servers, data servers and clients, designed to integrate tightly with the Logix controller platform and FactoryTalk Directory. Its scalability is strongest where the controllers and the rest of the stack are already Rockwell.
What decides most projects is not raw scale but fit to the installed base.
Ignition Perspective is a browser-based client that runs on any device with no installed software, which makes operator access from tablets, office PCs and phones straightforward. Vision remains the thick client for stations that need direct operating system, file or serial access. FactoryTalk View SE has historically been a Windows thick client, with FactoryTalk Optix added as Rockwell's web-based visualisation product. AVEVA offers web and mobile access alongside its established thick clients, with web capability growing across recent releases.
All three vendors are moving toward browser and mobile access, so the question is how mature and central that capability is on each. Weight it heavily for a greenfield project, lightly where operators work from fixed, hardened stations, and confirm current capabilities with each vendor, because this is the area changing fastest.
These capabilities decide whether the SCADA stays an island or becomes part of a connected, recoverable plant.
On the historian, Ignition ships a built-in tag historian on the same database and tag structure as the SCADA. AVEVA has a strong historian heritage in the product now branded AVEVA Historian. FactoryTalk integrates with FactoryTalk Historian, built on the PI engine that was OSIsoft and is now AVEVA PI System following the acquisition. The comparison is less about whether each can historise and more about whether the historian is bundled or licensed separately, and how it fits the site's reporting stack.
On IIoT, Ignition's native MQTT and Sparkplug support is a genuine differentiator for projects centred on a Unified Namespace, which is why it features so often on greenfield industrial data and IIoT work. FactoryTalk and AVEVA both have IIoT and cloud paths and can publish to MQTT brokers, but the architecture and modules differ, so treat MQTT centrality as a selection criterion rather than assuming parity. All three support OPC UA, the common ground on mixed-vendor sites.
On redundancy, all three run a redundant server or gateway pair on a broadly similar pattern: warm standby carries extra load for faster failover, cold standby loads less but recovers more slowly. The decision is an availability question answered by what an outage costs the process, and it has to extend past the server to the network path, the historian database and the power feed. A redundant server behind a single switch has only moved the single point of failure.
All three platforms provide the building blocks for a sound alarm system, including prioritisation, shelving and an alarm journal, so a deployment on any of them can follow the ISA-18.2 alarm-management lifecycle. The decisive work is rationalisation and priority assignment, done with the process and operations team, not a default the platform arrives configured with. A poor alarm model carried from an old SCADA onto a new one stays poor regardless of the product, so rationalise as part of any migration rather than replatforming the problem intact. The deeper treatment sits in our guide to SCADA design for food and beverage plants.
The PLC estate is the single most important input to the decision, because the SCADA spends its life polling those controllers.
FactoryTalk is built around the Allen-Bradley estate. On a site running ControlLogix and CompactLogix, the integration is deep, tag browsing is direct, and the engineering tools share the FactoryTalk Directory and Studio 5000 environment. That tight coupling is FactoryTalk's strongest argument on a Rockwell-heavy plant.
Ignition is platform-agnostic by design, with native drivers for Allen-Bradley, Siemens, Omron, Modbus and most other devices plus OPC UA, which suits mixed-vendor sites running several PLC brands on one gateway. AVEVA also connects broadly through its driver set and OPC UA, and is widely used over mixed and Siemens-based estates.
The practical rule: a single-vendor Rockwell estate pulls toward FactoryTalk, a mixed estate pulls toward a platform-agnostic option, and the choice between Ignition and AVEVA turns on the other criteria above. The PLC side of the decision is covered in our PLC platform comparison.
| Situation | Platform that usually fits | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Rockwell-heavy site with working FactoryTalk | FactoryTalk | Deep Allen-Bradley integration, existing skills and infrastructure, no migration cost |
| Greenfield or multi-site IIoT build | Ignition | Server-based licensing, browser clients, native MQTT and Sparkplug, platform-agnostic |
| Large existing Wonderware or System Platform estate | AVEVA | Object model and historian heritage, established support, value in the installed system |
| Mixed-vendor estate, no incumbent SCADA | Ignition or AVEVA | Both platform-agnostic; choose on licensing shape, client needs and support skills |
| Plant SCADA / Citect already deployed at scale | AVEVA Plant SCADA | Mature distributed architecture, proven at large tag counts, retained team knowledge |
The table is a starting point, not a verdict. The strongest single factor is usually the installed base, because the cost of fighting an existing estate and retraining a team is often larger than any feature advantage.
Consider a mid-size food plant in outer Melbourne running a process area on Siemens controllers and two Allen-Bradley packaging lines, with an ageing SCADA approaching end-of-support. The site wants mobile access for supervisors, plant data flowing to a future MES, and a cleaner alarm system, and it has one controls technician and no deep SCADA skills in-house.
The mixed PLC estate weakens the case for FactoryTalk. The mobile and MES requirements favour first-class browser clients and native MQTT and Sparkplug feeding a food and beverage data architecture that can grow. The thin skill base favours predictable licensing an integrator can support without per-station cost surprises. On those criteria the build points toward Ignition, with the existing Siemens and Allen-Bradley controllers retained over native drivers and OPC UA, and the alarm system rationalised as part of the project rather than carried across. The detail of running Ignition on a food and beverage site sits in our practical Ignition guide.
If the same plant were all Allen-Bradley with a working FactoryTalk system and no IIoT requirement, the answer would flip toward staying on FactoryTalk, because the migration cost would not be justified. The situation decided the fit, not the platform.
Work these top to bottom, but recognise that the installed estate and the incumbent SCADA usually settle the decision before the feature comparison begins. A capable platform that fights the existing plant is a worse outcome than a sound platform that fits it.
Metromotion Controls delivers on all three families, and the recommendation for any site follows the existing PLC estate, the IT constraints, the support skills and the functional requirements. If you are weighing the decision, the most useful inputs are your existing SCADA, your PLC mix and the sites in scope; with those we can work through the right platform and architecture as part of our PLC, SCADA and HMI programming work.
Vendor and industry references, cited so the technical claims above can be checked against the originals. Product details and licensing terms change, so confirm them against current vendor documentation at the time of decision.
PLC logic, SCADA architecture, HMI upgrades, fault finding and historian integration for production sites.
OEE, downtime, historian and production reporting systems built from reliable plant signals.
Automation, traceability, CIP, SCADA and production data for Australian food and beverage plants.
A practical view of where Ignition is the right SCADA platform for Australian manufacturers and where it is not.
SCADA system design considerations for alarms, records, historian data and operator use.
Rockwell, Siemens, Schneider, Beckhoff and Omron compared on programming, motion, installed base and support for Australian manufacturers.
When Ignition fits an Australian food and beverage site: Perspective vs Vision, architecture and redundancy, OT security, and buying Ignition locally.
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Platform fit comes before platform capability
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A practical ISA-88 guide for Australian food and beverage plants: when batch control pays off, the three models, phase states, FSANZ traceability and migration.
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ISA-88 gives batch control a consistent structure
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How CIP automation cuts trade waste and chemical cost with endpoint-driven phases, protects chemical tanks, verifies coverage and records audit evidence.
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Endpoint-driven phases cut cost without weakening the clean
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