The problem we kept running into

Every plant we have worked in has the same shape of problem. The data exists. It is in the PLCs, the meters, the switchgear, the MES database. What does not exist is one place where all of it means the same thing to everyone.

So each project rebuilds the same layer: an OPC server here, a historian there, a reporting tool that reads from the historian on a schedule, a tag naming convention that survives until the second site. Three products, three tag databases, three chances to disagree — and a controls engineer who becomes the only person who can explain what DB1.DBW24 means.

What we decided to build

One install that does the whole path: connect to the equipment, model it once as a live namespace, build the pipelines and screens against that model, and historise, alarm and secure it — without stitching four vendors together.

That is a large surface area, and we are aware of how that sounds. It is why the product is built as a set of small services rather than one monolith, and why the connectivity layer, the historian and the alarm engine each carry their own test suites.

What we believe about industrial software

Licensing should not tax curiosity. Per-tag pricing makes engineers ration the thing that makes the system useful. We license per server. Add a signal, add an operator, add a screen — the price does not move.

The namespace is the product. Screens and dashboards are the visible part, but the durable value is a model everyone downstream can read without asking a controls engineer for a translation.

Be specific about what does not work. Every industrial vendor's website claims everything. Ours lists the protocols we have not implemented, on the pricing page and in the FAQ, because the fastest way to waste your afternoon is to discover a gap after the download.

Boring where it counts. Store-and-forward, clock-drift correction, quality codes: unglamorous, and the difference between a trend you can trust and one you cannot.

Where we are today

QUBIQ 1.0 is released and generally available. We are still a young company — it is not running a thousand plants and we are not going to imply otherwise. We work closely with a small number of design partners, building against their equipment and fixing what they find.

If that is interesting rather than alarming, we would like to hear from you.