Dan Prudhoe — Why MQTT Wasn't Enough for Enterprise Manufacturing

Dan Prudhoe spent 15 years building industrial systems at a large chemical manufacturer — scaling from beta Ignition in 2009 to 70+ gateways across 30+ sites. In this ICC 2025 conversation, he walks through replacing a legacy Unix MES with Ignition, adopting Spark Plug B and MQTT, hitting MQTT's limitations, and building an enterprise event mesh with Solace that streams millions of tags from edge to cloud.About the GuestDan Prudhoe is a Senior Solutions Engineer at Solace. Previously he spent 15 years at a large chemical manufacturer leading Ignition adoption from beta, building a standardized platform across 30+ sites, and architecting an event mesh for millions of historized tags.Key Topics CoveredIgnition from beta (2009) to enterprise-scale across 30+ plantsBuilding modular, upgradeable standards across diverse sitesSpark Plug B and MQTT: decoupling systems, lightweight data collectionMQTT limitations for transactional and guaranteed deliveryEvent mesh with Solace: edge to cloud, multi-protocol, guaranteed messagingSelf-service analytics with SeeqUNS debate: centralized semantic layer vs. composable hierarchiesGraph databases and industrial data modelingThe path: self-service → automated → autonomous (agentic AI)Key TakeawaysStart with analytics, not SCADA — lower risk, proves value fast, builds political capital for mission-critical systems later.Build standards designed to flex — the first few deployments will break your standard, and that's expected.The path to autonomous manufacturing: self-service (SMEs solve their own problems), automated (event-driven workflows), then autonomous (agentic AI investigates and prescribes).Notable Quotes"We wanted to build a standard that's meant to have flexible standards." — Dan Prudhoe"Instead of we don't have enough data, they're almost like oh my god there's so much data." — Dan Prudhoe"We were able to allow them to start solving their own problems." — Dan PrudhoeTimestamps / Chapters[00:00] — Who is Dan Prudhoe? [01:06] — Ignition beta testing in 2009 [02:20] — MES 101 [05:10] — Scaling to 70+ gateways across 30 sites [08:53] — In-house vs. system integrator [11:01] — Ignition becoming enterprise-grade [12:00] — From Spark Plug B to event mesh [15:14] — MQTT's limitations [16:51] — Solace: edge to cloud architecture [20:55] — Self-service analytics for SMEs [26:31] — Predictive maintenance data provisioning [28:30] — The UNS debate [32:08] — Graph databases and ontology [33:42] — Wrap-upLinks & ResourcesSolace: solace.comDan Prudhoe LinkedInIgnition: inductiveautomation.comFlow Software: www.flow-software.comSpark Plug B: sparkplug.eclipse.orgAzure Data Explorer: azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/data-explorer