Ignition SCADA vs Wonderware (AVEVA) in Australia. A technical comparison.

The conversation we keep having.

Have you ever paid a tag-overage bill mid-project?

If the answer is yes, the rest of this article will not surprise you. If the answer is no, you have either standardised on a platform with permissive licensing or you have a procurement person who has been quietly absorbing the overruns. The licence model question is the one we get asked most often by plants comparing Ignition and AVEVA (the platform many engineers still call Wonderware). The answer changes by sector, by tag count, and by how the engineering team prefers to work. The platforms are not interchangeable. They are not directly comparable on cost either, until you spell out the model.

What the platforms actually are now.

The product names have changed enough in the last decade to confuse the conversation. Worth a brief reset.

Inductive Automation Ignition.

Founded in 2003 by Steve Hechtman. The platform launched with a deliberately different licensing model from the incumbents: one server licence, unlimited tags, unlimited concurrent clients. The architecture is Java-based, web-deployed, and scriptable in Python (Jython). Module-extensible: alarm pipelines, reporting, vision, MQTT, OPC UA, SQL bridge, mobile clients. Inductive Automation has had the fastest integrator-led adoption growth of any SCADA platform since 2015, partly because the licence model removes the cost-versus-scope conversation that legacy SCADA pricing forced.

AVEVA System Platform and Wonderware InTouch.

Wonderware was founded in 1987 and shipped InTouch, one of the first Windows-based HMI products, the same year. Schneider Electric acquired Wonderware's parent company Invensys in 2014. In 2018, Schneider Electric's software business merged with AVEVA under the AVEVA brand, and the Wonderware products (InTouch, System Platform, Historian, MES) were rebranded as AVEVA solutions. Schneider Electric completed the full acquisition of AVEVA for just under USD 11 billion in early 2023, making AVEVA a wholly-owned subsidiary. The underlying products are the ones plants have been running since the 1990s. The brand on the invoice is now AVEVA.

The licensing models.

This is where most of the cost conversation actually happens. The two models are different enough that comparing list prices in isolation produces a misleading answer.

Ignition: server-based, unlimited tags, unlimited clients.

One server licence. Unlimited tags. Unlimited concurrent client connections. The constraint is the hardware the server runs on, not the licence count. For an Australian single-site core install, expect AUD 22,000 to 35,000 for the server licence, plus modules at AUD 3,000 to 12,000 each (alarm pipelines, vision, reporting). The Edge product (smaller-scope, embedded) is meaningfully cheaper for small panels or remote stations.

AVEVA: tag-tiered, per-server.

AVEVA System Platform pricing scales with the tag count via tier brackets, with separate licences for clients, historians, MES modules, and OEM extensions. There is no single list price comparable to Ignition's server figure. For an Australian single-site project, AVEVA scope commonly lands between AUD 75,000 and AUD 700,000+ depending on tag count, MES integration, and which optional modules the plant standardises on. The pricing model rewards plants with very stable tag counts. It punishes plants that need to scale into new lines or add IoT signal sources without re-tiering the licence.

The model difference matters most at the 5-year mark. A plant that starts with 800 tags on AVEVA and grows to 4,000 tags over five years has crossed several tier brackets and absorbed the cost each time. The same growth on Ignition is a no-cost expansion within the existing licence.

Where each platform wins.

Where Ignition wins.

Plants that expect to scale. Plants with engineering teams that prefer Python and web-based clients. Plants that want a fast path from prototype to production. Plants where the procurement team has lost patience with annual tag-tier renegotiations. Multi-site customers who want one licence to cover the whole operation. Greenfield projects where the standard is being chosen for the next decade.

The Edge product is also a strong fit for small remote stations, water and wastewater pump houses, and single-cell installs where AVEVA's tiered pricing would not work.

Where AVEVA wins.

Plants with deep existing Wonderware installations and the operator muscle memory to match. The cost of rebuilding HMI graphics, alarm pipelines, and historian configurations from scratch is real, and if the existing AVEVA install is healthy, the migration case has to clear a higher bar. Industries where AVEVA's vertical solutions (PI System for process industries, MES for pharma) have a mature ecosystem of integrations the customer is already paying for. Plants where the corporate IT environment has standardised on AVEVA across multiple sites and the local plant is one node in a larger architecture.

AVEVA's reporting and historian stack also remains strong in process industries with long historical data retention obligations.

Where the choice is genuinely tied.

Single-line, single-site, mid-tag-count plants with no growth plan and a team that has not committed to either platform. The licence-cost difference is real but rarely the dominant factor on the first project. The dominant factor is usually which platform the engineering team can hire for and support over the next ten years.

The switching cost reality.

Plants tempted to switch from AVEVA to Ignition for the licensing economics often underestimate the rebuild work.

What transfers cleanly: tag definitions (with mapping), alarm priorities and groups, historian data (via OPC HDA or a one-time bulk export), recipe definitions, and most of the database-backed configuration. Vendor or partner migration tools cover this layer reasonably well.

What does not transfer: the HMI graphics themselves. InTouch graphics and AVEVA System Platform graphics use different rendering engines than Ignition Perspective or Ignition Vision. Symbols, animations, scripting, and the operator's muscle-memory layout all need to be rebuilt. Plants that try to "port" graphics one-for-one tend to end up with screens that look like InTouch screens running in Ignition. That is the worst of both worlds: operators get no benefit from the new platform's modern client capabilities, and engineers carry forward design decisions made for a different tool.

A realistic migration timeline for a single-site project: 4 to 6 months elapsed, with the HMI rebuild as the longest single phase. Multi-site projects extend proportionally. The cost is mostly engineering hours, with licence and hardware as smaller line items. For most plants the cleaner conversation is: keep AVEVA where it is running well, standardise on Ignition for new lines or new sites, and let the platform mix sort itself out across the next decade rather than forcing a switchover.

The AU support landscape.

Vendor support quality matters less than the integrator ecosystem on a brownfield site. Both platforms have credible AU support pathways, but the practical answer is which integrators can deliver work on each.

AVEVA (and the legacy Wonderware brand) has a deep AU integrator network, partly because Wonderware was the dominant SCADA platform in Australian manufacturing through the 2000s and 2010s. Most established AU controls integrators have AVEVA credentials and project history. Vendor-direct technical support is reachable but rarely the first call.

Ignition has a younger but growing AU integrator network, with Inductive Automation operating a partner programme that lists certified integrators. Pac Technologies has delivered on both. The integrator pool is smaller than the AVEVA equivalent but is concentrated in integrators who actively chose Ignition rather than inheriting it.

The practical question for a plant choosing today: which platform can you hire engineers for in Brisbane, Melbourne, or wherever your plant sits? AVEVA wins on the existing pool size. Ignition is closing the gap among new graduates and integrators that have refreshed their stack since 2018. Both are credible Australian choices in 2026.

Common questions.

Sources and further reading.

Vendor and industry references for the licence and product claims above. Retrieved 18 May 2026.

• Inductive Automation. Ignition Pricing. inductiveautomation.com/pricing
• AVEVA. Wonderware Solutions Are Now AVEVA Solutions. aveva.com
• AVEVA. Completion of Schneider Electric acquisition of AVEVA, January 2023. aveva.com press release
• NFM Consulting. Ignition vs AVEVA (Wonderware) Comparison for Industrial Facilities. nfmconsulting.com

This article sits under the Brownfield PLC Upgrade Guide. For the cutover side of a SCADA platform migration, see the SCADA cutover article. For the PLC-platform side that often precedes a SCADA refresh, see the S7-300 migration article.