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July, 2009: Wireless Healthcare Market Brief
May, 2009: Cellular M2M Worldwide Market Forecast
Consumer M2M Report: The Approaching Mass Market
Additional information is available at Reports.
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March, 2010 Snaps: SCADA
From the current issue of Beecham Snaps:
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) is a collection of automation technologies usually associated with process control. It first appeared in the 1960s and is prevalent in the oil and gas, water system, and electric utility industries. It's also found in rail transportation systems, environmental control systems in buildings, and manufacturing plants.
Distinctions between SCADA, distributed control systems (DCS), and various discrete manufacturing automation systems have blurred somewhat over the years even as newer M2M communication technologies augment older systems. Nevertheless, this technology is both a sub-sector and parent of M2M. Supervisory control involves an operator but many control functions below that level are automated -- machines communicating with machines -- while data acquisition is a form of remote monitoring. Systems vary in complexity; a simple system might monitor and control environmental conditions in a small office building, a vastly more complex system might be at the heart of a nuclear power plant.
The chief difference between SCADA and newer M2M technologies lies in the control functions, which tend to be data intensive and critical for safety, not just an industrial process.
For the full article, see: SCADA.
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