Velotic looks to the future: AI enters the heart of SCADA, historian, and the digital factory

• AI is moving deeper into industrial operations, helping transform plant data into operational insight and drive faster, more informed decisions.
• SCADA is evolving beyond visualization and control, with AI creating opportunities to help operators understand what is happening, why it is happening, and how to respond.
• Industrial historians provide a critical foundation for AI, turning years of historical process, alarm, event, and production data into context for analysis and decision support.
• AI agents could help address alarm overload by prioritizing alarms, correlating events, identifying root causes, and suggesting potential corrective actions.
• Natural language and generative AI could simplify engineering workflows, helping users create dashboards, process views, and analyses while keeping industrial experts in control.
• Connecting Proficy, Kepware, and ThingWorx creates a foundation for industrial AI across operations, spanning connectivity, HMI SCADA, Historian, MES, analytics, and industrial applications.

The industrial world is entering a new phase of digital transformation. After years in which attention was focused on data collection, connectivity, and process digitalization, today the challenge is to transform that enormous amount of information into operational knowledge and faster decisions.

Artificial intelligence, which in recent years has revolutionized IT environments in particular, is also progressively entering the world of OT (Operational Technology): the plant floor, automation systems, process control, SCADA environments, historians, and MES platforms. The difference is substantial: in the factory, AI must not only generate content or answer questions, but must understand complex industrial processes, correlate events in real time, and support operators and technicians in operational decision-making.

The evolution of the Proficy family fits into this scenario and is now at the center of a new industrial phase following the creation of Velotic, an independent company that brings together the technology portfolio from Proficy, previously part of GE Vernova’s industrial software business, with Kepware and ThingWorx from PTC. The objective of the transaction is to create a more integrated industrial ecosystem, combining HMI/SCADA, MES, industrial data management, connectivity, and IoT platform capabilities.

Talking about the future of AI in the Proficy world means starting from an extremely well-established technological foundation: iFIX.

Created as an industrial SCADA platform and developed within the GE ecosystem, iFIX has been adopted in thousands of industrial plants thanks to its reliability, its ability to integrate with heterogeneous automation systems, and its suitability for critical applications where availability and operational continuity are essential.

For years, SCADA has been the primary window into the process: visualizing variables, managing alarms, supervising machines, and supporting operators. But the paradigm is changing.

The SCADA of the future will not simply be a window into the process. It will become an intelligent environment capable of interpreting what is happening, suggesting actions, and helping people make better decisions.

Industrial Historians are a key element of this evolution.

Solutions such as Proficy Historian have for years performed the fundamental task of collecting, storing, and making available the information generated by industrial plants: millions of variables, process trends, events, alarms, and production parameters.

Today, that information represents an ideal foundation for artificial intelligence applications. The value is no longer simply in storing the data, but in understanding it.

Through AI models and intelligent agents, it will be possible to query the system using natural language, asking, for example:

"What were the main causes of the most recent shutdowns on Line 3?"

or:

"Which parameters are showing anomalous behavior compared with historical production data?"

The goal is to transform years of industrial data into an operational assistant that is always available to engineers, maintenance teams, and production managers.

One of the most interesting areas is alarm management, which has always been one of the critical challenges in industrial environments.

In many plants, operators today must deal with thousands of alerts, which are often difficult to interpret quickly. The traditional approach displays the alarm; the new AI paradigm aims to understand it.

AI agents integrated into SCADA systems and Proficy platforms could support activities such as:

• Intelligent classification of alarms based on priority, severity, and impact on the process
• Reduction of operational noise by identifying secondary events or consequences of a primary cause
• Correlation of events originating from different areas of the plant
• Automatic reconstruction of the sequence that led to an anomaly or downtime
• Analysis of conditions preceding a failure by comparing historical data with current behavior
• Suggestions for possible corrective actions based on knowledge of the process

The result will be a SCADA system that works more like an experienced technician: not simply reporting that something happened, but helping users understand why it happened.

Another important change concerns the way industrial applications are created and maintained.

AI agents could assist users in generating dashboards, operator screens, and process views based on requests expressed in natural language.

An engineer could ask:

"Create a dashboard to monitor line efficiency, highlighting production, scrap, downtime, and the main causes of losses."

Artificial intelligence could propose an initial configuration, while leaving final control and customization to the expert.

This does not mean replacing industrial expertise, but amplifying it: accelerating design, reducing the time required to analyze information, and making knowledge easier to access.

The real strength of the Proficy family's future strategy will likely be its ability to bring artificial intelligence across the entire industrial value chain.

From the machine and control level, through SCADA and historian, to MES and production performance management, AI agents could become a cross-functional layer for analysis and support.

The combination of:

• Data collected from the plant floor
• Industrial connectivity provided by technologies such as Kepware
• IoT and industrial application capabilities from the ThingWorx ecosystem
• Proficy platforms for supervision, production, and analytics

creates the conditions for a new generation of industrial software in which data is not simply visualized, but interpreted and transformed into action.

For decades, SCADA has served as the operator's eyes into the factory. The next evolution will transform it into a true digital collaborator. The direction is clear: industrial environments will increasingly need systems capable not only of controlling, but also of understanding.

The challenge will be to integrate artificial intelligence while maintaining what has made platforms such as iFIX a reference point in the industrial world: reliability, security, continuous availability, and respect for the operational requirements of the plant.

The new generation of Proficy aims to do exactly this: bring AI to where the data originates, at the heart of production, transforming the factory from a connected environment into a truly intelligent one.

Novotek Italy, formerly operating as ServiTecno, was founded in Milan in 1979 and provides software solutions for industrial automation and production data management. It has been active in OT Cyber Security for over twenty years, helping protect critical industrial networks and systems. Since August 2026, Novotek Italy has been a member of the Novotek Group. Learn more at www.servitecno.it.