Enuda is the Premier Ignition Integrator who focuses solely on Ignition to build SCADA, MES, IIoT, and data analytics solutions for manufacturing and utility companies in Europe to stay ahead of production issues and quickly assess what’s happening on the plant floor by accessing key data from one single source of truth—accessible anytime, anywhere, on any device. 

In essence, we enable you to have access to relevant real-time and historical data for analysis so you can make smarter decisions. And your life easier. 

Key characteristics

The focus only on Ignition

This is our bread and butter. From day 1, we’ve declined any project that requires us to use another industrial software platform to build applications. Why? Because: 

• We believe in mastery. The ol’ “Jack of all trades, master of none” makes me clap in approval. We want to be the best, so we needed to focus on getting exceptionally good at one thing, and we chose Ignition. Moreover, we don’t do PLC coding and the like. 

• We chose Ignition because it gave us everything we needed to build solutions that change our clients’ operations for the better. You can see how in this guide about Ignition. 

• It was simply a strategic business decision. Ignition disrupted the market, and I took a bet believing that it’ll get more and more popular thanks to its attractive model. It’s 2023… and I was right. 

A note here: we don’t work with other platforms except Ignition. However, if needed, we do use third-party solutions that fit well into the Ignition universe.

SCADA solutions only?

No. In our experience, the line between SCADA and systems like MES is blurred. People use the term “SCADA” for a range of systems/functionalities they want—sometimes they are, indeed, related to SCADA, and sometimes they actually mean MES, ERP, or just HMI etc.

Thus, we use SCADA to get the conversation going, but it’s not the full extent of our services. 

Enuda’s compass direction 

Our compass direction is to be the Ignition powerhouse of Europe—when a company decides to look into Ignition, the go-to should be Enuda. We strive every day to earn that by delivering as promised, sharing our knowledge with you all, and overall just being competent professionals and kind people. 

What do we do in Enuda? 

In a nutshell, we take your project from A to Z—from identifying problems and specifying to implementation and change management. With 25+ years of experience in project management and several projects powered by Ignition with mid-size and large companies, we are your guides and strategic partners.

Note: Enuda is a 100% remote company with employees in several corners of Europe. And yes, we do travel to your site.

Management consulting

We realised quickly enough that our job as integrators doesn’t mean just coding, it also means solving critical business problems and managing projects. We work closely with you to ensure a successful transition. 

First and foremost, we aim to understand your business: what you do, how you do it, what are the strategic direction, business objectives, and challenges you’re facing. 

Next:

• identify problems and opportunities for improvement within your operation.

• consult the stakeholders (end users, the OT professionals, the IT department, top management etc) and get buy-in for your initiative. 

• build your business case – present how a tech solution actually impacts the business positively by optimising processes, automating tasks, accessing relevant data to analyse etc. 

• align your project with the overall business strategy.

• make a plan – project timeline, budget, objectives, expected return on investment, resources, mitigating risks. 
  
• ensure timely and meaningful delivery every week (we use the agile methodology).

• consistent communication throughout the process with all the relevant stakeholders. 

• change management – this is often overlooked, but an initiative doesn’t end after the implementation of a tech solution, nor does it simply just get integrated within the daily operations. You must help people navigate the changes from the beginning, and empower them to actually adopt the new tech once implemented. 

Architecture

We work with you to design the optimal solution architecture that meets your unique requirements. This involves considering various factors, such as technology selection, system integration, scalability, security, and data management. 

Getting started with the right architecture is crucial. If you don’t, you risk having to go back in a few months to fix – or worse, re-do – things. 

We take a deep dive into your organisation to understand your processes and systems. This includes identifying the existing AND necessary hardware, software, and network components, as well as considering factors such as reliability and performance (on top of the scalability and security mentioned above).

Last but not least, we work together to figure out how to integrate various existing systems, legacy technologies, and data sources to create a unified solution. Yes, we’re talking about the Unified Namespace – here’s a video on what is it and how we build one.





Building the solution

Our Ignition Gold Certified engineers will: 

• Understand your needs and architecture to code your industrial application (yes, we require our team to understand the project and the client, not just do a task without the big picture).

• Use different environments to code and test (development, testing, production). But that’s not all – we use Docker containers to ensure portability, security and to reduce risks and problems in our work or in the deployment to your environment. 

• Ensure integration and interoperability with your existing systems, processes, hardware etc. Thanks to Ignition’s open nature and communication protocols like OPC-UA and MQTT, we can connect to your legacy systems. 

• Test and iterate – rigorous testing procedures are essential to ensure the reliability, stability, and security of the industrial application. This includes unit testing, integration testing, system testing, performance testing, and security testing. Any identified issues or bugs are addressed, and the application is refined through iterative sprints. 

• Assist with deployment setup – once the application is thoroughly tested, it’s deployed to the production environment. This involves setting up the necessary hardware infrastructure, configuring servers, databases, networks, and other components required for the application to run effectively and securely.

• Train your users and other relevant stakeholders – industrial applications often require training for end-users, such as operators, technicians, and managers, to ensure proper utilisation and adoption. User training sessions and documentation are prepared to guide users on how to interact with the application, understand its features, and leverage its functionalities to achieve desired outcomes.

• Provide ongoing support and maintenance – after deployment, the industrial application requires ongoing support and maintenance to address any issues, bugs, or performance optimizations. This includes regular updates, bug fixes, security patches, and proactive monitoring to ensure the application’s reliability, availability, and scalability.

Our services

Put in another (broad) way, our services include Ignition-based IIoT, SCADA, MES, and EnuData (data analytics). 

Essentially, we build the architecture, get your data from scattered sources to one place, enable you to visualise it in an understandable way, and provide ways to analyse it in order to act, make decisions, solve problems etc. 

“Ok, but do you have something on the shelf?”

We got a question recently from an automation manager. I’ll leave the screenshot here for context, but the question is, essentially, do you have anything ready to go? 

The answer to most of those questions is “yes”, but with some notes.

We don’t (yet) have Ignition products or modules per se. 

What we do have is a set of ready-made building blocks that we can choose from depending on your needs and put them together quickly. A toolbox, if you like—we choose only the tools you need and we almost just plug and play (almost, just to be realistic, because it still depends a bit on your unique situation). 

We call this toolbox “SCADA by Enuda”. Read more about it here.

So, we can build something entirely depending on your needs or you tell us what you want (i.e. a SCADA), and we’ll pick from our standard, ready-made building blocks to put it together for you. The second option in particular aims to reduce engineering costs by taking advantage of reusability and faster implementation. 



What we don’t do in Enuda

We know our place in the value chain. We do anything Ignition-based from SCADA and downstream toward data analytics. We DON’T do anything upstream toward PLC programming and the like. 

And if we’re being completely honest here, we simply don’t work with straight-up unpleasant folks (to put it nicely). Personally, in my career of decades as a project manager, I met a lot of people that insist on making their and everyone else’s life harder. Life’s too short for that – and there are many companies out there that do align with our values of respect, professionalism, and kindness. 

What problems do we solve? 

Let me tell you: I have an entire spreadsheet full of pain points that Enuda solves. I can write a mini book about them all, so I’m not going to dive into that. In a nutshell, we solve the problem of messy data, scattered in different sources. You get access to relevant, real-time, and historical data in one place, presented in an easy-to-understand way so you can analyse it and work smarter. 

Instead of dozens of bullet points, here are a few practical examples from our projects: 

• Quality station – trace the origin of the products with bad quality so you can get the info to analyse which specific line creates problems and why. 

• Production planning – An energy company wanted to optimise the production plan of the combined heat and power plant (CHP) to find the most profitable production strategy. We helped them do just that using machine learning. 

• Turn data into knowledge – they had data, but it was difficult and messy to access. Our contribution: get data from the system, make it easy and fast to access, analyse and present it in an understandable and useful format.

• The Logbook – move the old SCADA to Ignition and create a logbook/journal to store relevant info and data (connected to the SCADA) for employees to see, exchange, create reports about etc. Make it intuitive and easily accessible. 

• Implementation and rollout of a new SCADA based on Ignition in several hundred sites. Yeah, you read that right. A huge project, but one that made the project manager say “In my 30+ years as a project manager, I have not before seen a project of this magnitude and complexity running so smoothly.”

Essentially, we solve the problems that people find irritating on a day-to-day basis, but we keep the long-term vision. Yes, we do preach starting small, but scalability needs to be on our mind since day 1 so we start on the right foot. This is not to say that we get lost in abstract talks about the big picture and digital transformation, but that we have a purpose toward which we’re moving by solving small, practical problems that improve the daily work. 

How we work 

Ignition only 

… for IIoT, SCADA, MES, and data analytics solutions.

Again, we know where we fit in our client’s value chain, and that’s a proven win-win, especially when they tell us “hey, we’ve got enough PLC coders, we need help with integration. Given that you only do Ignition, you must be pretty good at it”. 

Agile methodology





Agile is a mindset founded on a set of values and principles. It’s not my intention here to go into the details of agile development, but let me point at Agile Principle #1: “Early and continuous delivery of value”. 

It’s impossible to overstate that principle’s importance in a fast-changing environment. A versatile platform like Ignition, in combination with an agile mindset, is the best bet for the future. 

An overview of our way of working according to the agile principles

Project Initiation:

• Define the vision and objectives of the project.
• Establish the project scope, timeline, and budget.
• Identify key stakeholders and involve them in the project.

Discovery and Planning:

• Conduct a thorough assessment of the current state of your organisation’s digital capabilities and infrastructure.
• Identify pain points, opportunities, and areas for improvement.
• Prioritise the identified areas based on business value and feasibility.
• Collaboratively define the project’s user stories, epics, and acceptance criteria.
• Create a product backlog that outlines all the desired features and functionalities.

Sprint 0: Preparation Phase

• Establish the Definition of Done (DoD) and Agile ceremonies (e.g., stand-ups, sprint planning, sprint review, and retrospective).
• Identify and address any infrastructure or technical dependencies.

Sprint Execution:

• Develop and deliver functionality in short iterations (typically 1-2 weeks) called sprints.
• Stand-up meetings to provide progress updates, address challenges, and plan.
• Continuously collaborate with you for feedback and validation.

Sprint Review and Demonstration:

• Gather feedback, review the progress against the acceptance criteria, and make adjustments if needed.
• Reflect on the team’s performance and identify areas for improvement during the retrospective.

Ongoing Iterations:

• Repeat the sprint execution cycle by selecting new user stories from the product backlog.
• Continuously monitor and adapt the project plan based on emerging requirements and feedback.

And finally, prioritise and deploy completed features to production in small increments.

Workshops

We visit you in person to conduct a workshop to “show and tell”. A miniature proof-of-concept, if you like.

Depending on your needs, the workshop can look different. But instead of giving you abstract examples, let’s walk through a recent proposal we made for a 2-day workshop (and how the actual workshop days went). 

Involved in the story were the team of a large manufacturing company, Enuda’s CTO Mathias, and Enuda’s CEO Jan. 

Enuda proposed a 2-day technical and architectural workshop to create a solid basis for an Ignition-based project. 

Objectives: 

• Short-term: Miniature Proof-of-Concept for using Ignition as the basis.

• Long-term: Get started on a necessary process of tying systems and data together. 

The main purpose is to take the discussion from the general and abstract to the specific. For that purpose, we use a specific manufacturing line as a use case. 

Based on the specific information and requirements for the line, we build a UNS – Unified NameSpace based on IIoT principles. 

The UNS fulfills two main functionalities – both of them, prerequisites for the “solid basis of the house”: 

I. It is the new and flexible architecture based on a central messaging broker, that ties everything together in a paradigm with a central hub and nodes. 

II. It is the necessary naming convention based on ISA95 that secures a future “single source of truth”. Building the UNS is a broader scope not attainable within this short workshop. But we can create a UNS aimed at the line and make it scalable for the future. 

We proposed an approach with two full inter-connected days onsite in their offices.

Our contribution during the proposed workshop covered: 

1. We participate in meetings onsite and prepare for solutions. 

2. We contribute our experience in putting IIoT solutions together. 

3. We document the entire process. 

4. We present the findings and facilitate a concluding discussion (pertains specifically to follow-up video calls). 

5. We build the agreed pilot UNS in Ignition (pertains specifically to the line). 

6. We moderate the workshop to reach the desired output.

The output from the workshop 

Based on the line, they have a UNS including streaming real-time data. 

That means they have a miniature Proof-of-Concept of how to use a central messaging broker to tie data together. Everything is created in Ignition. 

The workshop did not require them to commit to purchasing any Ignition licenses. We run the workshop either in trial mode or use an instance of our development license.

Thus, we went right into action and got something done to demonstrate the value to all the stakeholders that cared about it. No fluff, no wasted time.

Start small

The problem with any tech project within an industrial company (or any project in any company, for that matter) is that people get overwhelmed and stressed out from the very beginning because of: 

• Seeing the bigger picture, but not knowing where to start, 
• Analysis paralysis because there’s always something more to think about, 
• Not knowing what they want to achieve and how it’s going to impact the operation and organisation, 
• Loss aversion and the fear of the unknown and failure. 

Are these normal challenges to have in a project? Absolutely. Do we need to let them hold us back? Absolutely not. 

Over and over again, we’ve proven to ourselves that this one principle (among a few others) can decide the success of a project: start as small as possible. 

This reduces the risks tremendously. Every sprint (according to the agile methodology), every delivery, every step… it all has a logical flow and a result to show (look at that rhyme, who said we can’t be poets too?). 

When things happen in smaller, consistent batches, they’re easier to handle because our focus is sharper, and thus also the risk of the project being stalled by over-analysing is diminished. Moreover, flexibility and adaptability are much greater. 

Get started at no cost
 

“Is it really the best financial decision to offer to invest some of your time to show them what’s possible?” 

In the long run, yes. 

And also, not everything is (just) about money. In this industry, companies are reluctant to start projects because they don’t know how it’s going to play out and how worth it is the ROI. There’s a long way, filled with doubt, until the money talk can even happen, and it’s our duty to show them what’s possible. 

Thus, to bring some ease to the mind and project, we choose to go with “show, don’t tell”. 

Hey, we’re all engineers around here – we want to see some action, for crying out loud. What’s more fun than seeing what a real solution could look like in your very own operation? And if Ignition allows for that quick and effective test, why not make the best of it?

Basically, we’re aiming to reduce the risks by investing some time, at no cost on your side, into building something practical that shows you what your operation could be like with a smart solution. If you like it, we’ll go from there. If you don’t, pull the plug, and we’ll each be on our own way—you lost nothing, and we won a learning experience. 

Our story 

My wife Bettina and I have been running our own consulting business since 2006. In 2016, I was working for one of our clients, helping them as a project manager integrating some business systems. 

In the middle of that process, that company realised: “now THIS is an old SCADA system. We need a new one.” So, we decided to start looking for solutions for a new SCADA. You know how it is at this point – you don’t know where to even start, so what do you do? You turn to the good ol’ Google. 

And that’s exactly what we did. And we just found Ignition, among others. We don’t know what this Ignition thing is, so it’s easy to go in with a certain bias that “oh, this is going to be difficult to learn, it’s gonna be expensive.”

But when you go to Inductive Automation’s website, you learn that Ignition is extremely affordable and very conveniently organised in modules. The next natural step is to be skeptical. “This is probably too good to be true”, but we downloaded Ignition for a trial period. 

At the time, I was working with a young intern. And I thought “eh, this Ignition thing is new, and this is an intern, he’ll probably work on it for a week or so”. 

1 hour later, *knock knock* on the office door. It was the intern: “I got data! Aaaand I may just be connected to a pump station that I can actually control right now…”

The client decided to give this a try, run a pilot project. Out of curiosity and entrepreneurial mindset, I began sniffing around, talking to other clients, and doing some research, and I realised that there’s nothing quite like this out there. I mean, a platform that’s both powerful and rich in features AND is priced so well? We must be sitting on a goldmine here. 

So, I gave it a shot. But I couldn’t do it alone. Remember that intern? It was Mathias. Today, he’s our CTO, and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Put Ignition in his hands and you’ll get what you want. 

Turns out, we were, indeed, sitting on a goldmine. And the strategic decision to use only Ignition since day 1 to build solutions was just incredibly inspired because… look at what’s happening today. 

More than a company

Enuda isn’t meant to just be a business to make money from. Thankfully, it’s a success story from a business/financial point of view, but that’s not all. 

We created this business with a few core values in mind – if we couldn’t stick to them, we’d genuinely just close it down. 

This is a space where people can develop themselves professionally and personally. It’s a space for diversity, respect, continuous learning, and ambition. We treat each other as autonomous individuals with sound judgment and freedom, but also integrity and accountability. We’re 100% remote without surveillance software or set hours. We don’t waste time on unnecessary meetings. 

Bettina and I set this in stone since day 1: after decades in the corporate world, we don’t want a company that is as rigid, slow, and limited as a corporation. Sure, things like KPIs, processes, and systems are necessary (we’ll essentially take from the corporate world what’s effective), but we’re willing to rock the boat and take risks. The magic of innovation and growth happens on the edge, not in the comfort zone. Our vision is bold and modern – just like us. 





Our values 

Entrepreneurship makes us dare more

Entrepreneurship is a mindset. 

It’s a particular way of thinking and going about your daily business that influences decisions daily. Entrepreneurship is a mindset where you are focused on getting the ball rolling. You commit yourself to action, test things, take the initiative, and are responsible for seeing things through. 

It’s also a mindset where you intuitively understand that you embark on a journey without a playbook or blueprint. Nobody can tell you how to do things. You’ll have to figure things out yourself as you go along. That is naturally scary; entrepreneurship is about accepting and dealing with risk. 

Entrepreneurship is embedded into the DNA of Enuda and enables a culture characterised by learning and trying something new every day. 

“Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.”

Sara Blakely, entrepreneur and founder of Spanx

Bootstrapped makes us try harder

Bootstrapping a business is likewise a mindset. It’s a particular way of thinking regarding financing your business. 

A bootstrapped business is not relying on institutional investors or substantial bank loans to finance its daily operations. It’s easy to define what it is not. A bootstrapper is not a money-raising bureaucrat aiming to go big in a hurry and then sell the business. The mindset is more about building something profitable and staying in the game for the long haul. 

Enuda is a bootstrapped business and has been from the first day. The mindset might limit what we can do, but it also provides the freedom and flexibility to make our own decisions. 

“When someone says “Think of all the things you could do if you raised a ton of money”, I instead think of all the things I couldn’t do. I value independence more than any check anyone could ever write me.”

Jason Fried, entrepreneur and founder of Basecamp

Don’t ask for permission

Some people play to win, but most people play not to lose. 

Because most people focus more on not losing, they tend to copy or emulate what others do. It appears to be the safe bet. Look at what others do and how they do it, and then copy that into your own business. 

But that’s not how we do business in Enuda. We play to win; therefore, emulating how others do things is not a way forward. Because of the entrepreneurial mindset and the acceptance that there is no blueprint, we don’t copy. We dare to be different by design and stick to the ideas that feel right to us.

For example, Enuda is a 100% virtual and remote business and started that way long before it got fashionable. 

“Raise your ambitions. Lower your expectations. The higher your ambitions, the bolder your actions. The lower your expectations, the greater your satisfaction. Achieve more and be happy along the way.”

James Clear

Principle of force – we focus our efforts

With the compass direction laid out, we don’t allow for any distractions. As a successful business, we’re continuously confronted with opportunities to test this or the other technology. It is easy to get distracted because there are always excellent arguments for deviating from the defined strategic direction. 

Maybe much bigger organisations can allow themselves to spread their resources, but that’s not an option for a smaller outfit like Enuda. We’re in this game to win, to offer the best Ignition-based solutions in Europe, and focus is essential to our success. 

“Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.”

Carl von Clauswitz

Mastery – we want to be the best

We believe in getting exceptionally good at what we are doing, and we invest in getting there. Training and personal development are essential elements of our work ethic. 

That we focus a lot on developing coding skills is obvious. Still, the amount of time and attention we put into learning about project work, communication, and human nature is probably more surprising. Business is personal, and being exceptionally good at Ignition coding is even more valuable when you can explain and train others. 

In other words, we value a holistic approach to our work and want to develop ourselves professionally and as human beings. 

“Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers!”

Seth Godin

Be kind as an approach to life

The world is full of annoying, unprofessional, and direct unpleasant folks. We deliberately chose to be different, to be trustful and trustworthy. 

We commit to treating people with respect and dignity. And we’re willing to take the business consequence when faced with disrespectful behaviour. We can’t control other people’s behaviour and actions, but we don’t have to accept them. 

Therefore, we pledge to dump clients who treat any member of the Enuda team in a disrespectful or disgraceful way. We have zero tolerance toward sexist, racist, religious or similar statements and behaviour. We aim to be a team of open-minded and exciting people with whom all our clients would love to sit down and share a meal and a cold beer. 

The mantra inspires us: go positive and go first. 

“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”

the 14th Dalai Lama

Be accountable because the world sees you

We own our failures as well as our success stories. We create trust in our deliveries by making and keeping commitments. The Ignition platform is built on ideas of openness and transparency, and we want our work to be in the same spirit. 

Often, we do difficult things, and it’s hard for the client to assess the amount of work necessary to make things work. To counter this, we communicate openly and honestly about our best possible workload assessment. 

We refuse to play political games and will show integrity in all our work. When we make mistakes, and we will make mistakes, our job is to get the issue on the table immediately, own it, and get it fixed. 

“If you own this story, you get to write the ending.”
Brené Brown

Why should you choose us? 

I wrote an article about how to choose an Ignition integrator to work with, you can find it here. 

But other than that… Naturally, you decide for yourself. What you read above is Enuda, and we couldn’t be more proud of it. The team is exceptionally competent, professional, focused, and, last but not least, friendly. 

We work(ed) with amazing clients – sometimes even I couldn’t believe the emails I got from super large manufacturing companies inquiring about our work with Ignition. To think that we get seen by the “big dogs”, now that’s a signal for success. And the magnificent thing is that we have the expertise to handle large projects. 

Unfortunately for our marketing, we have NDAs with almost all of our clients, but here are some testimonials that may show you why it’d be a good decision to choose us: 

“As of 2022, we have cooperated with Enuda over a period of three years. The effort is related to the implementation and rollout of a new SCADA solution based on the Ignition platform from Inductive Automation. As a water utility company with an inventory of 2.500+ installation sites, we expect the project to continue until 2025 – or even longer.

The cooperation with Enuda is most rewarding. Their staff is highly competent regarding the platform and the technical issues involved, and as a partner, we find them open and forthcoming, quality-oriented, reliable, and easy to work with.

In my 30+ years as a project manager, I have not before seen a project of this magnitude and complexity running so smoothly.”

– Hans-Henrik Kaaber (Team lead, Digitalization), Novafos A/S

“We wanted to get access to data quickly and easily. In that regard, the project has been a success so far.

I would recommend Enuda for the team’s technical capabilities. They immediately identified the problem, figured out how to get into the system and get data out of it, and built a solution that allows us to access the data and actually use it to meet our business goals.”

Andres Abildgaard, Halsnæs Forsyning

“The collaboration with Enuda was very nice, straightforward, and flexible. It’s been fun and easy to work together, and their skills are just amazing. I’ve been doing the data gathering and cleaning work partly manually prior to the project, and they were fast to catch up, automate it, and add functionalities that make my life easier.”

Ida Bülow Gregersen, Ramboll

“We needed communication that was clear, even to people without technical knowledge. Ignition provided us with a solution that is easier to access, more flexible in its visual presentation and is cheap to purchase and configure.”

Jonas Johansen, Norfors

Thanks for reading. You have my email if you would like to talk. 

Jan