Virtualization technology and Process Control System upgrades

Growing numbers of applications for replacement Process Control Systems is the evidence that the lifetime of these assets is not as long as our industry was used to in the last century. This unsatisfactory trend is the reverse of the ¿cost saving by standardization-medal¿, because standardization in the field of IT comprises no more than 5 years. High cost in the case of an upgrade is consuming the initial cost saving by far. Personal Computer (PC) technology which predominated last two decades is -from many perspectives-neither efficient nor cheap. Main-frame-based and smart Start-up companies recognized those deficits and moved efficient resource utilization and eased system administration back into the focus. They called the rediscovered technology "Virtualization". In a nutshell, with Virtualization, Information Technology today is moving back from decentralized to more centralized structures. The main target group of this trend is certainly the "classic" IT, because main benefits are becoming important in big data centers and large IT environments. A by-product of virtualization is the possibility to run "obsolete" applications on up-to-date hardware. This feature of virtualization attracted the attention of process automation. Different industries and automation system vendors are aware of the benefits of virtualization and they are started using it for both engineering and on-line process control system purposes. The migration from physical to virtual platforms turned out to be smooth and numerous cement plants are either already using virtualization or are considering implementing it. The price to win is an -in principle- unlimited extension of the lifetime of the existing Process Control System.