A computing platform to ensure the availability of critical processes and control systems is receiving increased attention in South Africa to ensure that the software driving new industrial systems, including automated and robotic processes, functions continuously, says industrial systems availability experts Stratus Technology business development executive Brendan Widlake.

Stratus Technology has been providing critical availability computing platforms for mines, oil and gas facilities, nuclear power plants, financial services and pharmaceutical companies for 35 years, says demand for its always-on systems is increasing, especially to ensure industrial system availability and reduce loss of revenue.

“Our platforms are mostly applied for sys-tems and processes where a loss of control systems could mean a risk to lives, loss of revenue and damage to reputation. For example, our platforms provide the base from which oil-rig pressure-control and monitoring systems run, which is critical to health and safety. They also provide protection against environmental damage and loss of revenue.”

Stratus fault-tolerant servers platforms carry financial guarantees with regards to their availability and run payment exchange systems in financial services, control and monitoring systems at plants, access control and software systems at nuclear power plants in Europe, as well as ticketing, signalling and application availability for Belgian Railways.

“Our platforms are world class and operate many delicate and critically important systems, such as the flood gates in the Netherlands that protect the lowlands and cities from storm flooding. These systems cannot fail and, thus, our platforms ensure continuous availability of operational systems,” says Widlake.

Stratus’ availability-guarantee platform is a fully replicated and duplicated set of industrial-grade servers. Critical control and process systems are run on these platforms as they would on any normal server. The platform runs all processing and data through both servers at exactly the same time and, should one of the servers fail, the other server will continue functioning with zero downtime and no negative impact on the performance of the systems run on the platform. The faulty server is then replaced without any impact on operations.

Further, Stratus is also deploying its platform as a virtualised system in factories, where availability is important, but where a loss of system availability will not threaten people’s lives.

“We find that most factories are operating 10 to 15 virtual machines on each server in their environments; this is where customers are using our virtualised availability platform to make their virtualised environments and control systems robust and to ensure that control and monitoring systems are always available.”

The company also reports significant growth in the automation of manufacturing and pharmaceutical processes in South Africa, as well as in the use of robotics, which is an area where it reports burgeoning demand.