Today's Automation News Headlines from Automation.com

July 25, 2011 — Kepware Technologies released KEPServerEX version 5.6. Kepware has added three new products to its communication platform KEPServerEX, which have primary relevance to both the Manufacturing and Oil & Gas and industries.

The Weatherford 8500 Serial Driver was developed as part of Kepware’s continuing effort to provide reliable and intuitive products to the Oil & Gas industry. It communicates with WellPilot Rod Pump Controllers, which gather and monitor critical production information from oil and/or gas well sites. KEPServerEX’s connectivity to Weatherford 8500 allows operators to monitor information, alarms, and events from remote locations and provides operators the ability to make process adjustments.

As part of this introduction, Kepware has added a Media Level Redundancy plug-in option to KEPServerEX to address the critical operations that often occur in the Oil & Gas industry. Media Level Redundancy including Device Level and Communications Path Based Redundancy will be offered as a free plug-in for the next six months.  This Redundancy will provide an additional level of reliability over Kepware’s existing RedundancyMaster product, which supplies OPC Clients with OPC Server redundancy.

KEPServerEX’s new MTConnect Driver allows connectivity to industry leading machine tools that support MTConnect or any legacy equipment through an MTConnect Agent. MTConnect is a royalty-free Open standard for connecting shop floor technologies that furthers the Automation industry’s goal of seamless manufacturing operation. The MTConnect Driver allows the retrieval of machine-level statistics for productivity, OEE, and SPC analysis.

The KEPServerEX 5.6 release also includes a new Applicom device model for the Modbus Ethernet Driver, a Ford Ethernet Protocol device model for the Torque Tool Driver, and several CTI device models for the Simatic 505 Ethernet Driver. In all, 25 driver enhancements and over 75 KEPServerEX platform enhancements were made.  

“We are investing heavily in the Oil & Gas space over the next year. This includes the delivery of additional communications protocols, as well as application-level functionality required by this industry,” said Tony Paine, President of Kepware Technologies. “The Weatherford 8500 Serial Driver will be the first of many additional protocols released over the next several months. In addition, Media Level Redundancy will allow customers to develop or take advantage of their existing fault tolerant systems.”

ABOUT KEPWARE: Kepware Technologies, established in 1995, develops a wide range of communication and interoperability software solutions for the Automation industry. Our flexible and scalable solutions are for connecting, managing, monitoring, and controlling diverse automation devices and software applications. Our industry endorsed software solutions improve operations and decision-making throughout all levels of an organization. Kepware Technologies' mission is to be “Your Standard for Connectivity”.