Initial situation

In May 2007, Siemens announced the acquisition of UGS Corp, expanding the range of automation technology provided by Siemens - particularly in the area of product lifecycle management software.

With the release of FactoryLink Version 8 SCADA, a decision was announced by Siemens to stop future product enhancements and place the product in maintenance mode.

This decision allowed the former FactoryLink development team to form a HMI Center of Competence (CoC) to focus on helping to enhance the Siemens SIMATIC WinCC products for the general market and to develop automated technology for FactoryLink customers to migrate to SIMATIC WinCC.

Existing Customer Support & Service (CSS) contracts for versions 6.6, 7.5, and 8.0 will be honored without restrictions until October 2012. Sustaining engineering for operating system revisions, layered product revisions, and defect correction will be provided under the terms of a CSS contract.

To protect your investment, FactoryLink customers are being offered cost-effective and low-risk options to switch to a powerful, future-proof SCADA platform with all the benefits of the "Totally Integrated Automation" concept from Siemens.

A network of contacts in the HMI CoC in Plano, Texas, USA, are ready to answer all your questions about support options and to provide expert migration assistance

Migration benefits

"Never change a running system!" - This piece of wisdom is as true as it is incomplete, because one can equally add: "But don't forget to change it as long as it runs!" Eventually every system reaches the point where it is a good idea to really think about a controlled and systematic change to a replacement system.

Siemens has spent considerable time and effort to ensure that you can transition your FactoryLink system to state-of-the-art SIMATIC WinCC technology with the lowest cost and risk using automated migration technology, developed by the HMI CoC in Richardson, Texas, USA.

The sooner you migrate to SIMATIC WinCC, the sooner you can utilize the many features and benefits that SIMATIC WinCC affords. In many areas, SIMATIC WinCC functionality is much broader and deeper than legacy FactoryLink systems.

The benefits not only lie in the indisputable qualities of the destination system WinCC, but also in the general commercial offer established for a migration of FactoryLink customers – designed to protect your investment.

Benefits of the destination system SIMATIC WinCC

Benefits of the general conditions:

Migration support

You can convert your FactoryLink projects to SIMATIC WinCC, and thus preserve your engineering efforts. For this migration process, Siemens is offering you very favorable commercial terms on replacement SIMATIC WinCC licenses and a number of supporting services to make your migrations low-cost and low-risk.

Migration analysis:

The HMI Center of Competence (HMI CoC) can analyze your existing FactoryLink applications and provide you an estimate of the overall effort and investment required for a complete migration to SIMATIC WinCC. In most cases, you find the overall cost of migrating FactoryLink to SIMATIC WinCC much lower than starting from scratch.

Basic Migration

With this service, specialized automated tools are used to migrate all key application components (tags, graphics, animations, server scripts, I/Os, alarms, logging) to a native WinCC application. For simple applications, this concludes the migration, and the testing and commissioning can be started.

For more complex applications, some additional work maybe required to implement specialized functionality.

Additional Migration Services

This phase is comprised of special engineering services that are based on the preceding phases, and requires the corresponding know-how from both programming packages to, e.g., unlock the full WinCC functionality.

Specialized consulting services, training courses, or on-site commissioning are also available to support migrations.    

SIMATIC WinCC Licenses for FactoryLink customers

For FactoryLink customers who made the decision to migrate, Siemens is offering several special migration license packages for SIMATIC WinCC.    

Offer for FactoryLink Customers without valid CSS Agreement 

Offer for FactoryLink customers with valid CSS Agreement

Contact

For all questions on switching from FactoryLink to SIMATIC WinCC contact persons are ready around the world and in the HMI Center of Competence (HMI CoC) in Plano, Texas, USA.

The HMI CoC in Plano, Texas, USA

With the former FactoryLink development team at the nucleus, Siemens has formed a new HMI competence center in Plano, Texas, USA. The activities of this competence center are organized into three basic categories:

You may contact the HMI CoC directly at :