This year has been an eventful one for Ignition's global community, which has grown to include industrial organizations in over 70 countries and nearly 1,300 system integrators around the world. As Ignition community members developed increasingly innovative solutions, participated in live events and online training by the thousands, and provided a high level of product requests, the Inductive Automation team has been very busy supporting the community's growth with new resources.
The 2015 Ignition Community Conference (ICC) was the company's highest-attended conference yet, which brought over 400 attendees from around the world to the Harris Center in Folsom, California. The Discover Gallery at this year's ICC received almost three times as many entries than in 2014, and about half of the entries were from companies based outside the United States. The entries came from many industries: building automation, cement, dairy, energy, enterprise software, food processing, oil and gas, pulp and paper, transportation, and water/waste water. You can see videos and information about the Discover Gallery finalists here.
Inductive University, the free online training website which launched in September 2014, continued to grow in 2015. As of December 2015, more than 4,900 people have registered at Inductive University, where they have watched over 900,000 videos and taken over 260,000 topic challenges. Users can receive a credential in Ignition SCADA and Ignition MES by earning all of the specializations within each respective school. If you haven't registered up yet, simply go to www.inductiveuniversity.com and provide a valid email address and password.
The Feedback Portal is another online resource that was launched last year and has seen huge levels of participation. Its purpose is to help Inductive Automation's development team collect and prioritize user feedback. Ignition users have submitted over 275 ideas and over 1,200 votes through the Feedback Portal over the past year. As a result, a range of new features and improvements were developed and included in Ignition v7.8. To visit the Feedback Portal, go to http://ideas.inductiveautomation.com/
This year, Inductive Automation provided further support to the Ignition community by starting a new division called Sales Engineering. The Sales Engineering division endeavors to help community members get more projects by providing high-level technical expertise that complements the sales support from account executives. Sales Engineering provides assistance through web demos, lunch-and-learns, answering technical questions, helping with RFPs, joint presentations between integrators and end users, architecture discussions, and other efforts. If you're interested in working with Sales Engineering, contact Co-Director of Sales Engineering Travis Cox at: travis@inductiveautomation.com
The growth of the Ignition community has brought with it an increased global demand for Ignition training, which has led Inductive Automation to start a Certified Training Center program. The new program offers an opportunity for trained and experienced Ignition integrators who’ve met the proper requirements to open a Certified Ignition Training Center in their region. If you’re interested in more information about this new program, please contact Director of Training Bobby McKenzie at: robert@inductiveautomation.com
In 2016 and beyond, those in the Ignition community can expect that Inductive Automation will continue to place a high priority on providing them with valuable, easily accessible resources along with innovative product releases.