Established at the beginning of 2004 as a spin-off of ipcas GmbH, IPCOMM GmbH is a medium-sized enterprise based at Erlangen, Germany.  Our primary focus is on the development of industrial protocol converters and inter-network communication solutions.

Based on our ten year's development experience in this field and our wide range of products, we are able to offer solutions to almost any communication problem. Over the years we have proven our competence in numerous projects servicing the  energy industry, water utilities and gas business around the world, providing turnkey solutions and integrating the solution into existing systems.

History and Market

The development of communication protocols - and protocol converters - for bridging the information barrier between different protocols is an often underestimated challenge. The complex technology requires tremendous expertise and know-how.

The early days of telecontrol technology saw the emergence of a great variety of proprietary protocols due to the lack of appropriate standards. These were continuously expanded and adapted to project specific needs in order to meet customer requirements. Many of these protocols have already disappeared, others have found widespread use and are still popular today as the systems boast a very long life cycle.

Technical progress has brought the first national standards such as DIN 19244 or HNZ with a primary focus on the physical and link layers. These have evolved into widely accepted international standards such as ISO/IEC 60870-5. Some of these proprietary protocols, i.e. Modbus, DNP 3.0 or Profibus have become standard protocols after they were published and released to independent user organizations for further development.

Over the years, applications have continuously grown more complex and functional capabilities demanded of communication systems have increased tremendously. While 1-bit protocols used to be sufficient for representing the state of a digital input, a more abstract representation of information is used today that features numerous additional attributes such as information quality and time of the status change. Moreover the amount of transmitted data has grown enormously and networks have become much more complex.

Our Products

Only products which are flexible enough to cover all project specific requirements can do well in the marketplace. They have to offer extensive diagnostic possibilities for easy troubleshooting of communication and software problems. Configuration has to be fast and easy, the price-performance ratio must be good.

ipConv and products based on it meet all these requirements. The foundation for ipConv was laid more than ten years ago. A strict separation of software, hardware and operating system has resulted in a product that offers great potential for further innovation to build on. Thanks to its potential, the product could be developed to reflect continuously growing demands without ever reaching its limits. ipConv enables a high degree of productivity in the implementation of new protocols and special customer needs.

Right from the start we have relied exclusively on standard hardware systems such as PC based systems (of different models and designs) - at a time when regular PCs in station automation technology in energy distribution and other automation industries was still unheard of. In the meantime most manufacturers have started offering PC based systems. They are becoming more and more popular as they are attractively priced and provide a wide range of functionalities.

For the same reason we have always insisted on solutions independent of the operating systems. Today we are able to provide products for customer-specific or project-specific solutions with a few exceptions both for the Windows NT/2000/XP and Linux platforms.

Our Customers

Our customers include many prestigious names in plant engineering as well as manufacturers of automation devices here and overseas. Regional and global energy utility providers are among our clients. Longstanding successful partnerships are proof our customers' satisfaction with our services products.