Migrating SCADA to an Open IIoT Platform to Optimize Water Infrastructure Delivery

WaterBridge, a midstream water management company, outgrew their existing proprietary control and SCADA systems. As operations expanded rapidly, the closed architecture limited flexibility, constrained visibility into operational data, and prevented the company from leveraging emerging technologies. Without direct ownership of its systems, costs scaled significantly alongside growth, making a modern, open platform essential to sustaining operational efficiency and long-term cost control.

We first conducted a phase one engineering assessment to define a migration path and then executed the full replacement of WaterBridge’s legacy systems. The team architected an IIoT-enabled Ignition SCADA platform hosted within Microsoft Azure, leveraging Ignition’s Enterprise Application Module, MQTT, and Sparkplug B with redundant Cirrus Link Chariot brokers. Deploying Ignition Edge across all 65 SWD facilities to collect more than 2,000 tags at one-second intervals gave WaterBridge a level of data resolution and operational visibility its previous system could not deliver. Using Sparkplug B’s report-by-exception and store-and-forward capabilities further improved data quality and optimized bandwidth usage across the network.

Our team used Ignition Perspective, taking a mobile-first user interface and user experience (UI/UX) design approach to optimize the experience across devices—from mobile phones to high-resolution monitors—so stakeholders at every level could easily access and navigate the system. We reduced operational burden without requiring additional infrastructure investment by repurposing existing on-site hardware for local human machine interfaces (HMI) and building automated Railroad Commission of Texas compliance reporting processes. The platform now gives WaterBridge full ownership of their systems, centralizes data across all aspects of midstream allocation, and serves more than 30 customers with consistent, enterprise-wide visibility.