Like their office counterparts, industrial networks are becoming more heterogeneous. Rarely does a network consist of equipment from a single manufacturer. HiFusion, a tool provided free of charge with Industrial HiVision v5.0, is a stand-alone application which facilitates the integration of any SNMP-capable device into Industrial HiVision. HiFusion also includes a wizard, to guide users through the creation of the integration files. Industrial HiVision v5.0 now offers the best of both worlds: the device management granularity of a manufacturer-specific application and the device management diversity of a generic open network management platform.
Whilst industrial networks are becoming larger and more complex, and Industrial HiVision v5.0 offers an intelligent response: distributed management. A network management hierarchy provides master and slave network management stations, to ensure that any size of network can be supervised.
Product Manager Mark Cooksley points out: “In the office world, network management is the domain of the IT department; experts with many years of IT experience. In the industrial world, not everyone is an IT specialist. Industrial HiVision was designed from the ground up to be a product which will be used by automation engineers. The project set-up wizard in v5.0 leads step-by-step through the most daunting task - getting started. The resultant configuration can be customised later.”
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