Rockwell Automation, Inc. (ROK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Welcome to today's webinar, Getting the Most Value Out of ThinManager. My name is Tom Jordan. I'm the Marketing Lead for ThinManager. We got a few housekeeping items. [Operator Instructions] The webinar is being recorded, and you'll be able to access the recording post event using the same link that you did to register for today's webinar. So without any further ado, I'd like to introduce our senior product specialist on the ThinManager team, Kim Gonzalez. She's going to be leading us through the presentation this morning. Kim has been on our team for over 2 years. And we're excited to see what she has to tell us this morning. So Kim, take it away.

Awesome. Thanks so much for the introduction, Tom, and hello, everyone. Like Tom said, I'm Kim. I'm from the ThinManager team, senior product specialist. And today, I'm going to talk about how we can give you the most value with our ThinManager solution, and specifically our value towards the IT and the OT departments in your manufacturing facility and kind of what that means in terms of how we help you meet your goals and address your problems. So let me start here with kind of some thought questions as to where we stand for our visualization strategy and where ThinManager can kind of come into play. So from the OT side, who is responsible for security? We know that A lot of times, IT focuses on security, and there might not always be a direction for OT, but we want to kind of see what is important to OT when it comes to addressing security needs for the plant. And then how about digital transformation? What exactly does that mean to both IT and OT? Is that ripping and replacing all of our old hardware and bringing in new hardware and software? Or can that be kind of a step-by-step modified approach and what we can do to kind of meet you in the middle with that transformation? And lastly, does your visualization strategy align to our ever-changing workforce? So our operators and line staff is constantly turning over and what does that look like for meeting goals on the plants floor and meeting our security needs? And how do we at ThinManager, help you address those issues? So now, why are these things important? This is kind of a little bit of data to support why we need these kind of key elements in our visualization solution. So, for security, manufacturing and production pay higher random costs than any other industries. So we're looking at over 2,000 -- I'm sorry, 2 million average paid in ransom per year from the U.S. and how we can eliminate and reduce vulnerabilities to potential ransom experiences for our customers. Now about the labor costs and how -- what it looks like to go through those upgrades and the effort that it takes. So Windows upgrade projects can take years to complete, especially at a rate of USD 125 to USD 175 per hour. That's a huge expense in addition to all the hardware and other necessary requirements for your networking and architecture refresh. And lastly, the skills that are needed to operate the technology that's constantly evolving, constantly changing to meet your production and security goals. So 65% of skills needed for manufacturing change faster than the scale of the workforce. So how do we work to address upskilling our workers when we have fewer and making our solution intuitively more productive to help alleviate those stresses from the changing workforce? So first, I'm going to give kind of a solution overview. This is what our agenda looks like today. And then we're going to go into kind of our value proposition and the overview of the solution and kind of those ways that we help IT and OT get the most value, going to go quickly through licensing and talk about what's new and exciting in our latest minor release of 13.2. So first, I want to kind of give a big picture view of ThinManager as a platform itself and kind of the pillars of value that we provide. So for over 20 years, we've been working exclusively with manufacturing and on plant floors to help achieve outcomes by simplifying content delivery from your visualization system and being able to manage devices centrally. And how we do this is through reducing your total cost of ownership of hardware on the plant floor, reducing downtime expected and unexpected or planned downtime, reducing security risk, making your solution more secure and increasing workforce productivity. So that core value proposition, reducing total cost of ownership. What does this mean? What does this look like? This is reducing a cybersecurity footprint by removing operating systems from the plant floor and giving them 0 clients instead with no local operating system. So this gives us simplified application and patch management, something that IT really favors as well as reducing the time it takes to commission and patch and set-up workstations. So this is kind of the key to the value of ThinManager utilizing server-based computing. And we also provide for our clients a vendor-agnostic approach, meaning the hardware is not essential to what ThinManager does. So we have a variety of hardware partners and ways to deliver your applications to different hardware solutions. And lastly, our platform is constantly improving. So we take into account the ever changing needs of the customers and architecture. So whether that's looking at more of an edge-type deployment, working on OEM applications and even non-Windows architectures, those are all things that we're evaluating for future iterations of ThinManager in the future. We also use a variety of tools and methods with our changing IT protocols and needs to be able to deploy at scale, more enterprise level and validate with tools like our rest API and other ways that kind of cater to a more enterprise deployment. We are improving how ThinManager works with the other Rockwell portfolio software products. So things like working with Studio 5000 Logix designer, FactoryTalk [ USC, ] FactoryTalk Optix and more. We're constantly looking for better ways to integrate and give a more all-encompassing visualization solution. And lastly, we want to be sure that we're keeping up with IT security protocols and any potential vulnerabilities that our customers might experience that we take into account those vulnerabilities, and we are always changing and enhancing the product for our modern IT issues. So now at a high level kind of what ThinManager does before we get into the real value part. What we do is we take all the visual content from the plant floor that exists kind of isolated in different parts and take it central. So things like panel views or different web sources that are utilizing web clients with different software that might be necessary for management or for HMI, ERP, MES type software as well as camera feeds. All of these are kind of interesting different applications that can then be brought into ThinManager and completely configured to your liking, whether it's to deliver it to a specific device, we use the 0 clients or we can pick Cboot PCs and use mobile devices as well to give any type of this content to those devices. We can also configure exactly what you want your users to see, whether it's specific maintenance groups or admin personas that need to see specific things and not have access to other content types, we can configure all of those needs within our management console. We can deliver by location so that you can see exactly what is relevant to a given position or part of the line and the plant of the specific machine and arrange all of that securely from the ThinManager server. And lastly, by event, so whenever there is an internal trigger something in our systems ThinManager that configure changes in the disclosed based on [indiscernible]. So with that, I want to go into how our solution helps the IT and the OT groups meet their goals? So we have here a kind of a classic wen diagram that we all use in elementary school, but I think it does a good job to kind of tell the story of what IT cares about, what OT cares about and what they both care about. So IT wanting to reduce the management and increase security. So it's potentially producing management of server-based resources and how many RDS servers need to be used and the cost at licensing and management of those. Of course, they care about fewer vulnerabilities and being able to manage users. So whether that's with active director users or groups being able to manage and authenticate users properly. IT is huge on being able to do that with a low maintenance product and without a lot of constant intervention. What they have concerns about is hardware availability and the cost to acquire the hardware as we've all seen that the last couple of years, supply chain issues have been unpredictable and being able to acquire the right hardware not too high of a price point is a difficult problem that our IT stakeholders face. And lastly, the Windows 10 refresh. So something like there's a need to see updates in windows or to patch and change the operating systems. There's a lot of security risk there, and that is a potential way that ThinManager can help. So from the OT side, things like reducing downtime and increasing productivity. The goals of these people tend to be having robust and durable hardware that won't break and that will withstand the environmental conditions as well as easy to maintain and to train new operators on because if we don't have the ability to constantly have enough operators who want our hardware and our system to be more self-sustaining and to always have that machine availability and be able to handle any changes that happen in the workforce. So concerns like we said, the machine uptime and availability as well as reducing downtime planned or unplanned. And then the implementation of security initiatives, like we said, typically owned by IT. But if OT does have us in the map, they need to be ready for [indiscernible] as well and how we can help meet that, then there. So the goals that they bring [indiscernible] are removing PCs from the plant floor. So how we both care about all of those different things and how PCs really need to be eliminated, and we can centrally manage our applications and bring them down to our thin and zero clients. So now a quick poll from the audience today to see what is your role within the company. I think they might not all -- you might not go into all these categories, but on your screen, you should be able to select if you're on the OT side, control systems engineer, IT side, networks or other type of IT engineer or potentially operations or production management or a ThinManager admin like assistance integrator. So we'll get just a couple of seconds here on this poll. [Voting]

All right. So let's see what we have for results. Okay. So about 80% in OT. So it's good to know that a lot of our -- a lot of our benefits do help OT that we are primarily an OT product, but building in more and more IT benefit of functionality. So we'll see kind of as we look into all the value propositions of ThinManager, how that's going to help you guys from the OT side. So now I want to get into a little bit deeper dive of how ThinManager kind of meets those needs from the -- as a base of our value proposition. So reducing management and increasing security, again, being more IT focused and reducing downtime and increasing productivity, more OT-focused and how all of these are kind of the pillars to the main value that you get from ThinManager by reducing the total cost of ownership and taking the PCs off the plant floor. So like we've been talking about, when you have individual workstations, those all tend to have their own operating system, their own applications locally installed. Antivirus software potentially moving parts such as fans and power supplies that can be more prone to failure as well as USB access, which is a potential security threat. So taking that to all the PCs gives the management -- makes it very difficult to management to manage from the IT perspective and how to be able to maintain that in kind of this traditional automation network is very difficult. So with this ThinManager solution, we take the operating system and the applications and the antivirus software that used to be down on the plant floor level to the server level. So this is the way that ThinManager deploys everything to those thin and zero clients, again, and no operating system, but they are receiving all of those visual contents like we talked about, the cameras, information from the controller, panel views, HMIs and they're being delivered down to the workstations. So overall, reducing the management by replacing those PCs with ThinManager managed devices. So I'm going to take a quick look at security and what this part means, especially to IT. So reducing security risks or securing the plant floor and the server side of the plant. We have a technology that utilizes docker containers to help plant floor visualization. So basically, this is using the local RAM of the thin client to host any web browser container can, be Chrome, Firefox, Citrix Storefront. And so we're no longer relying on server-based resources or RDS servers to bring web content. So reducing the overall footprint of devices running operating systems, mitigating cybersecurity vulnerabilities and securing all of the assets owned by IT from potential security threats like installation of malware and kind of giving that double layered security by hosting locally, not being connected to anything else. And then from the user perspective, the way that ThinManager handles security and permissions is how we interact with the system. So whether that's authenticating with a password pin badge using a wearable like Nymi, and we've started to look at things like iris scanning and facial recognition to authenticate the user and confirm they are who they say they are and deliver the type of content that they need. And this then gives the opportunity to also use those user permissions from active directory. So we have this synchronization within ThinManager to give IT that ease of user management by having these capabilities to integrate user permissions. And again, essentially authenticating, meaning those permissions get configured on the server side, so it can give that user the right permission on any device throughout the plant for that specific device, what is allowed to be shown there. So a lot of different ways that we secure the workstation again, that this is just delivering the session, so there's no access [ through ] a desktop, for example, and other ways for operators and other plant personnel to get into anything else because there's no operating system. It's only that screen, and they can't do anything else. So inherently giving a more secure experience than a traditional PC running your workstations. So expanding on that kind of security position, I want to talk a little bit about how we're working with our other portfolio of products such as FactoryTalk Optix. This is our kind of latest extensible HMI product that has web-based clients. And the way that we work with Optix is we can actually utilize our docker container technology to manage those optix web clients on the thin client. So now we're able to give all of that the benefit of centralized management from ThinManager to your optix web clients. So this is not only decreasing the need for expansion in servers for optix, but it's also being that double layered security of your web browser isolated on the docker container as well as being isolated with our closed Linux firmware, making it a much more secure web browser session than that. That would be on a server. And then optix has its same functionality, being able to connect to PLC's database the UPC UA (sic) [ OPC UA ] connectivity. And we can either colocate or put Optix in ThinManager on separate servers. And this is how we're able to securely deliver our Optix HMI solution. So I'm going to do another quick poll in regards to Optix. So we just kind of want to know, pick whichever one closes or applies to you -- the first 2 regarding FactoryTalk Optix web clients, either I'm using it and I don't need centralized management or I'm using it, and I do need centralized management. And then next is the Optix panel. I'm interested, but I don't want it centrally managed or I'm interested, and I do want it centrally managed. So meaning centrally managed with ThinManager. And it's okay if you're not using these solutions today, but it will be something that you would consider in the future, you've started to look at talking with either your Rockwell or your Rockwell channel partner about the use of optix. Alright. So we'll give just a couple more seconds here. [Voting]

Okay. So a little bit split but about exactly 50% interested in the optix panel, which is awesome, that's a lower cost option of FactoryTalk Optix with centralized management. So you see the value of the optix channel with ThinManager. And this is definitely something that we want to take a look at and potentially put on our road map for the future. So thank you for that. Okay. So now we want to move into like we said, our OT, or operational technology partners here on the call over 80% kind of some metrics and some things that you all care about. So increasing productivity, especially with the ever-changing workforce. So whether that's in the control room or on the plant floor, ThinManager has a lot of capability to configure the visualization for exactly what we need to see. So that's utilizing all of those HMI screens, camera feeds, web content sources. Two different sizes and configurations on your screens, connecting multiple monitors and giving the control room, the maximized view of everything being able to interact or to even shadow other terminals. And making whoever is kind of monitoring the line and the different things on the floor, the capability to see everything and interact with it the best way possible. And then on the plant floor, meaning next 2 machines, next to your drives, next to a conveyer or an oven, you can utilize some of our location-based content delivery to see, for example, a wiring diagram for a variable frequency drive when you scan a QR code and you get delivered to a mobile tablet that wiring diagram, and that's all completely configurable to whatever makes the most sense for the plant floor workers to see. So it really gives that kind of flexibility to get exactly what you need right away and to help with the knowledge transfer because they no longer have to know in which file and which computer and what place to get a certain documentation, but we already have that configured. And whenever they're in that area, they scan that code and they get what they need. So there's no training necessary there and inherently improving our productivity and giving our employees more power and more capabilities. So now how do we reduce our downtime? Whether that's unexpected or planned downtime, we have several measures within ThinManager as well as working with our applications. So when we say highly available applications, that means we have multiple HMI servers that are going to be readily available with our applications. And then in the case that we lose connectivity to one. We instantly have another copy of that application, and we're connected and we're able to produce it on that same screen and like there's no loss of visualization and nothing ever happened. So being able to configure that and to prepare for any potential network or connectivity issue gives us that kind of constant and repetitive visualization. So we don't have to cause a downtime event due to a network connectivity issue to a server. Next, like we've been preaching that eliminating the PC from the plant floor illuminates more of that kind of susceptible hardware failure. But in the case that a thin client does fail, there is a very quick and easy way to replace it because nothing is stored locally on that device. We're able to just unplug the cables, replug into a new thin client, a new piece of hardware. Power and boot it up, it will deliver the ThinManager firmware and deliver that ThinManager terminal configuration, we call it, but basically, it will be the exact same screen and the exact same experience that, that failed thin client just had. And under a couple of minutes, we'll have -- we'll be back up and running. So this can happen in the middle of the night. This can happen when the lead engineer is not on site and pretty much anyone can do it. So it's a very quick and easy way to eliminate any type of downtime for any period of time beyond just the replacement of that device. And lastly, constant uptime during server maintenance with our ThinManager redundancy licenses. So this gives us the opportunity to continue delivering firmware and the ThinManager terminal information. In the case, we need to take a ThinManager server down for maintenance or for other reasons to have that kind of backup of ThinManager capabilities. So we offer our redundancy licenses. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in the licensing portion in the presentation. So continuing on kind of how we reduce downtime and how we help our OT staff save time. We have released earlier this calendar year a value-add application known as ThinManager Logix pinpoint. And this is another example of how ThinManager works with the other Rockwell portfolio products such as FactoryTalk USC and Studio 5000 because those are both key parts of this solution. So what it is, is we essentially are taking in alarm or some type of trigger that we see in our HMI and it can be any HMI that has ActiveX control. And basically, we take that trigger that we preconfigured such as an alarm with the specified controller code that we have in our system and ThinManager takes that trigger and will display that controller code pointing to the exact tag that caused that alarm. So this kind of automated navigation is huge when trying to troubleshoot code out a specific alarm or a specific fault that we're not able to find right away and saves operations as well as engineering time going through controller code. So a real kind of application of this that we've seen in the field is when it comes to a fault on a VFD, that's controlling a conveyor belt, for example. So in the traditional scenario, the conveyor trips on a fault and typically, the operator will do a hard reset of the drive to try to clear fault, to fix the issue. And then, when and if that doesn't work, they have to call an engineer, the engineer will have to go download the program that will take time because it's a heavy program, go online with the controller, search for the specific parts of the code for the VFD, dig through parameters and then ultimately find that fault and address it, or clear it. So with ThinManager Logix pinpoint, we expedite that entire last part of the process by automatically delivering you a view-only version of your Logix code right there on your HMI screen. It can overlay on top. It can pile next to it. We can kind of customize again the experience that you need but that will give the operator or the engineer the place and the code where the fault exists and be able to clear it and address it immediately. So saving a lot of time and process when working in a controller code and troubleshooting. So now I want to do a quick one more poll on this application, ThinManager Logix pinpoint to see do you require it? Do you see a use for it in the plant -- do you think that, yes, I can see it just as is today or I would like to see it, but I would like it to connect to a different HMI and HMI of my choice, not [ USC. ] Or no, I never need to do this. I don't open controller code. I don't do it view only. I don't want anybody doing that to troubleshoot. Or lastly, I pretty much work on my controller changes through asset center, and that's where I make changes and download my code, for example. So we'll see what everyone's thinking about pinpoint and where it will best fit on your plant floors. [Voting]

All right. Let's go ahead and see our results. Pretty split. But yes, we are seeing that. We can see the use of it today. We would like more connectivity to our different HMI. That is something we're starting to look at. We are looking at how we can work with optix as well. And then no, because we're working in asset center. That is another point that we're starting to look at how we can integrate with asset center. So that -- with that, that version of the code you're seeing is the latest updated asset that's been checked into asset center, and you will bring it down, again, view only, but we'll be able to use the latest ACD file. So awesome. Okay. So now let's go quickly into our licensing models for both ThinManager as well as pinpoint. So our licenses are called V-Flex licenses for both our base ThinManager as well as our redundancy companion and that gives us, again, a secondary, ThinManager server to be able to synchronize with our primary server in the case of meeting that back up. So we offer both perpetual with maintenance. Maintenance is a yearly renewal of your support that can be either 8/5 or 24/7 as well as accessibility to all of our latest versions that is pretty critical for staying up to date, staying secure and being able to use all of our functionality that we have to offer as well as subscription, and of course, coming in at a lower price point, but being renewed annually. We work through the software, Rockwell Automation e-commerce portal. And the kind of advantages here of V-Flex is that they are not dependent on the network or the location that they reside. So this really enables kind of enterprise management and deployment of software. A lot of our bigger customers really benefit from our pricing incentives. So of course, as you buy more, they get cheaper per license. And then so you start with some this year, but you want to buy some more next year, you will kind of inherit that pricing benefit based on kind of the amount that you buy. And so we have that kind of volume-based discounted rate on our licenses. We also have access to a portal that you can see your licenses and how you want to distribute them in your plant or in your enterprise and have visibility to all the licenses that you own as a company. So a lot of benefits for how we kind of sell ThinManager and to help you build your enterprise and be able to do it in kind of a graduated approach like we talked about. It doesn't have to happen all at once, but you can start to grow as you start to implement more and more ThinManager in your plant or in your enterprise. And next, how we sell ThinManager Logix pinpoint. So this is, again, an application that requires ThinManager. And today, working with FactoryTalk USC. So we have a solution bundle in kind of a small 5 pack, a medium 10 pack or a large 25 pack that offers that many client licenses and then the equivalent amount of pinpoint licenses at kind of a bundle of price structure. So you're kind of getting a pricing incentive there by buying all together. And if you want to just add it to your existing ThinManager deployment, or you're buying more ThinManager and you want to try out pinpoint, you can buy it as a recommended product coming in at a different price point, but can be a perpetual license or a subscription, the support or the maintenance with pinpoint is included with ThinManager, assuming you're already buying and renewing your ThinManager software maintenance. So these are the kind of the ways that you can get pinpoint and start to try it out. So lastly, I want to talk about for those that are already ThinManager users and everything I just said was repetitive, but we want to see kind of what's coming up, what's new. So we did have a 13.2 minor release that actually came out today. It's now available for our existing customers that want to upgrade. And what is part of that latest release, we are addressing both kind of the IT and the OT side, again, as I said, we're continuing to evolve and give value to both parties. From the IT side, we've added some security measures to protect against some vulnerabilities to make things like secure authentication during synchronization. So when you have the primary and secondary ThinManager servers, supporting device authentication. So when hardware has a TPM, we can ensure that the firmware gets delivered properly kind of growth and expansion of our certificate policy. So now we allow you to bring your own or to use a Microsoft Windows certificate for container, and we kind of give you that option. And lastly, Secure Boot unknown kind of IT protocol to validate the firmware and boot loader delivery. And this is today only working with our ASEM Rockwell hardware, ThinManager-ready hardware. So on the other hand, for our operators and for our OT side, we're expanding in kind of the application of our thin client and our ThinManager firmware and configuration delivery by offering wireless. So now we are working together with our hardware partner on logic to have a ThinManager-ready wireless thin client. And that basically means that it's shipping with the bios of ThinManager already on the device, no operating system, similar to any other ThinManager ready such as ASEM type of hardware you would buy today, but no longer depending on that wired connection for firmware delivery or terminal configuration. And this is giving a lot more use cases and applications to our customers that potentially want to use a card or some type of isolated workstation that will connect to a wireless network and essentially when it boots, you will connect to your WiFi network and password, and it will deliver over that WiFi network versus over your wired connection. So we're very excited about this release and definitely check it out, like I said, available now. And lastly, I just wanted to do a quick call to action and advertisement about our presence in automation fair this year in Boston. We're going to be all over the place, we have a lot of kind of hands-on examples of some of these new functionalities such as working with optix working pinpoint and as well as kind of some of what's coming in terms of our evolving platform. So we've got 2 labs, introduction to ThinManager as well as a more advanced lab, taking your ThinManager deployment to the next level, that's going to be offered at all 4 days of automation fair. And then we have sessions kind of a partnership with our HMI business and how a ThinManager works with [ USC ] as well as optix and can be giving you a new way to look at plant floor visualization. We have a more security focused. So talking a lot of the things I talked about today, but getting a little bit more in depth, a little bit more technical on our IT and our OT security strategy as well as a demonstration of some of the security functionalities and managers. So that one's going to be great, too. And lastly, innovation architectures that age or enterprise control. So this is how ThinManager works with PlantPAx than the remote operations sector to kind of give you that full enterprise level look of your ThinManager and other software architectures. And we'll be on the shelf floor. We're going to have a lot of exciting demos with optix, with pinpoint, like I said, and we'll be kind of managing a lot of the visual content out there. So very exciting that ThinManager [ has had us at the backbone ] and you'll get to see us in action in a lot of different ways. So with that, I think we'll go to the Q&A section. I think we're going to have Brian here. Brian is my colleague in the marketing side of ThinManager. So he's going to go through some of the questions that you guys have been asking and then, hopefully, I can answer them live and any of that we can't, we'll definitely get back and we'll send the responses attached with the meeting from the webinar today.

Yes, I want to thank everybody for sending in questions. Some of them, we answered as we went, but some of them we left unanswered, so that we could ask them on screen or live on this webinar. We are going to start out. We had some questions, some hardware questions. To start out, you mentioned PXE, you mentioned ThinManager ready at some point. I guess the first question really is, is there a preferred type of hardware when using ThinManager?

Yes. So to clarify, ThinManager ready versus ThinManager compatible, essentially, ThinManager ready, we work with the manufacturer to get the bios extension of ThinManager to boot automatically versus a PXE boot for a ThinManager compatible device that is basically having the PXE go to over on network and get delivered the ThinManager firmware that way. So we do prefer ThinManager ready. We have the ASEM 6300 family that we work in-house with. They're our own product. We have things like secure boot and these other protocols that only work with ASEM hardware. So that is our preferred option. And there's also the single point of contact support when you go with Rockwell versus a third-party hardware. But definitely, ThinManager ready and definitely ASEM is our preferred vendor.

Okay. We had another question specifically about ASEM and it is, can any ASEM PC act as a thin client?

So the ASEM 6300 line is now with the capability to make it ThinManager ready by going to the PCDC and downloading and installing the ThinManager trials. So this just came out recently, and the intent of ASEM is to shift ThinManager ready based on configuration. But yes, the box, the panels, the different PCs in the 6300 family, we have a knowledge-based article on that. I can link it here in the questions, and that will be the temporary process until we are able to ship those with ThinManager ready files.

Super. Okay. So the last hardware question because -- we did have some questions about wireless clients, Interesting enough, and then you touched on it. And we got a question if we have any knowledge of OnLogic taking preorders for their wireless declines?

I don't have knowledge of that. We are still kind of finishing some of the development there. They are going to modify a couple of their existing models to be Thin Manager ready because, again, they're going to be putting in the bios in their manufacturing, but the kind of the launch of their new ThinManager ready wireless model is last time we spoke with them still in October, but I would contact them directly in terms of preorders. But they are going to give a kind of a couple of options there. In the interim before that goes to market, assuming if they're still on that October timeline.

Okay. I do want to tell everybody as well. We did have some questions come in that are more support questions. And to encourage, we do have a support mechanism for asking a question through Rockwell to our support team. But we will also try to follow up with some answers to 2 questions we don't get to because we only have a handful of minutes left. So with those, I'm going to leave support for last, if we have time to get to them. The next question we asked is about redundancy. And if we recommend redundant servers for ThinManager?

Yes. So we do recommend redundancy, if you remember on that slide where we kind of talked about downtime and plans downtime because having that primary and secondary ThinManager server ensures that you'll always be able to boot your terminals in the case that, that one server does come down intentionally or not, and that's just kind of key to keep everything managed properly. And again, we sell that at half price of the base licenses. So that is our recommended architecture for -- from the ThinManager side.

Okay. So we had some questions about Logix pinpoint, ThinManager Logix pinpoint. And the first is just, I guess, how to set it up and configure it and I guess if you could point in the direction how to get started with it?

So we don't have a former user manual for pinpoint yet, but we do have a white paper that's published. We will link that in the question area as well. That will kind of give the step-by-step instructions for utilizing [ DSD, ] like we said, that's our first tried and true HMI that we've worked with and kind of all the steps that requires a little bit of [ BBA ] coding to set up the scope of your tags and the path to your ACD file. It gives the recommendations on where to have your Studio 5000 installed and things like that. So I definitely point you to there. We also have some instructional videos and other kind of resources that are available publicly on thinmanager.com/pinpoint, and we will link those as kind of follow-up action items from the webinar.

Okay. We also got a question about pinpoint and if it works only with controller-based alarm objects.

So I believe that there's a couple of different types of tag types that it works with. I'll double check on the different types, but there are the different scopes of controller-based tags and another type of alarm object that pinpoint will work with -- we just specify which one. I'll look at that.

And again, we're going to try to follow up with everybody with a little more detail on some of these questions. And maybe we don't answer fully. We also had some questions about security protocols, and you mentioned about 13.2 and kind of addressing security issues and the question was specifically around DoD sites, Department of Defense and the security profiles -- or sorry, security protocols that if we've addressed those if it's been within ThinManager.

So that one I don't know offhand. I'll have to see what those specific protocols are for DoD that you're referring to here and we'll definitely respond with what we have addressed within ThinManager for those types of vulnerabilities.

Okay. Let's see. We've got licensing -- basically, is ThinManager license per client or per server? It is per client, so I'll go ahead and answer that.

Yes. So those V-Flex licenses are not on that slide that we talked about that is per terminal connection. So that is per device, per client that you want to use and manage as in manager. And we don't have a server license.

We also got a question about specifically for SE distributed applications. And is pricing better for licensing to deploy ThinManager versus SE, and I was wondering if you could touch just a little bit about how SE licensing works with ThinManager.

So I guess I mentioned the bundle. So we are offering kind of a bundle of ThinManager with SE distributed. Those are kind of premade bundles from SE that they offer individually with the server and 5, 10 or 25 clients, and then it will be that equivalent amount of ThinManager license. So I guess the question is pricing better for licensing to deploy via ThinManager -- you do get a licensing benefit, one-to-one client that started in version 11. That is essentially like each session of US each client that will -- that ThinManager deploys uses one client license from SE. So that is a benefit of using ThinManager and SE together.

Yes. I think the question was a little bit if ThinManager or SE. And I think that there may be a little bit of confusion that you would use ThinManager to distribute the visualization of SE. So there may have been a little bit of confusion there. Let's see what else we got. I know we're almost out of time here. One thing to touch on, we had one individual ask about a SCADA distribution and kind of with like what -- I guess the best practices if they already have thick clients or PCs in place and moving to ThinManager and kind of the best practice if they have something in place. And if you could touch on kind of that moving towards ThinManager towards a thin client replacement instead of just tearing everything out and starting with fresh new hardware?

Yes. So that's kind of that phased approach that we talked about that you can keep some PCs and use that PXE boot functionality almost every PC with an x86 processor will be able to PXE boot and we'll be able to manage that device with ThinManager if you already have your SCADA or HMI installed on that PC that we do have a way to connect with that, but it is advised that we take those applications to servers versus individual PCs. And we can kind of gradually start to use that hardware as we start to use ThinManager and if we want to grow in ThinManager clients and eventually in ThinManager -- or I'm sorry, in thin client hardware in the future. That is the way we can do it gradually.

Okay. Yes. And we -- I will mention we also have WinTMC, which is an application specifically for Windows machines to help them integrate until possibly one fails and you can replace it with a Thin client or something easier to manage and at lower cost. The last question I'm going to ask you is another pinpoint question, and it -- does ThinManager Logix pinpoint integrate with asset center?

So not today, like I kind of mentioned in that whole question. I wanted to gauge the use case of those that make controller code changes by getting their vials as they're getting their assets and their assets under tree, and we will see kind of how we can work that into pinpoint to be able to grab that asset and be the delivered code that came from the triggered alarm and definitely looking at it for the future, but the existing pinpoint solution does not with asset center today.

Okay. Great. I think that's all the questions we have time to answer for today. Tom, I think you were going to close this out here.

Excellent. Well, thank you, everyone, for attending. We know how busy your lives are, and we appreciate you taking your valuable time today to spend with us. and talking about ThinManager. If you -- any of your questions didn't get answered, again, we'd be addressing these post event and updating them and you can log back in and watch this webinar again or get an update on the questions by using the same log-in you did when you registered for the webinar. And again, if you would, we appreciate if you take a little bit of time today to fill out the post-webinar survey. It just helps us all do our jobs better. And then finally, if you find yourself unable to find an answer in any other way, please visit us at thinmanager.com. You can find the team's contact information there, and feel free to reach out to us individually. We'd be happy to help and try to get an answer for you as best we can. Thank you.