The sixth edition of a weekly Question and Answer column with Gary Stern, President and Founder of Canary Labs. Have a question you would like me to answer? Email askgary@canarylabs.com
Dear Indy,
I can appreciate the difficulty of your decision. If your organization is like the other 5,000+ companies that are using TrendLink, then you have found it to be a hard working and reliable tool for viewing years of sensor data. It can be hard to try something else just because it is new!
We created Axiom four years ago to address two major concerns. First we saw a growing trend for IT security to move away from DCOM applications, Axiom uses WCF protocol. Axiom can securely connect to multiple historians across networks and keep those IT guys happy.
Secondly, we wanted to build a tool that would fully function within a modern web browser. The computers we carry in our pockets have made it possible to always be connected, we wanted a platform that works as fluidly on a smartphone as it does on a desktop. Browser capability also makes it possible to move off the Windows platform and use Axiom on Linux and Apple products.
In addition to security and browser developments, Axiom also adds the following functionality:
Cloud Friendly - DCOM free, Axiom can connect to the Canary hosted platform, Canary Cloud.
Calculate Trends Adhoc - Imagine if you could create custom trends on-the-fly using calculations and equations involving other existing trends, now a standard feature with Axiom.
Event and Asset Mode - You can now look at your data based on pre-built events or by defined assets.
These are a few of the many benefits, but you also asked for the negatives. The centralized historian requires a 64 bit platform, you may need to upgrade some hardware to achieve this. Axiom has nearly all the same functionality as TrendLink except you cannot change the trend direction to vertical like you can with TrendLink.
In the end, change is always hard and you are sure to have a few users grumble because something looks different today than it did yesterday. But relax, the upgrade is simple and all your existing trend charts can be converted to work with Axiom. All-in-all, this is a simple upgrade that will give you a lot of upside!
Sincerely,
