Arlen Nipper brings over 38 years of experience in the SCADA industry to today’s talk. Currently Arlen sits as President and CTO of Cirrus Link a company he co-founded in 2012. He was one of the early architects of pervasive computing and the Internet of Things and co-invented MQTT, a publish-subscribe network protocol that has become the dominant messaging standard in IoT. He has worked for Amoco and Koch Oil, and served as President and CTO of Arcom Control Systems and Eurotech Inc. His experience covers a broad range of technology from the design and manufacturing of embedded systems to SCADA system infrastructure implementations. Arlen holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (BSEE) from Oklahoma State University.

https://cirrus-link.com/

00:15 Introduction and Welcome

1:30 Topic Introduction

2:45 Arlen’s Career Journey – 46 years!

8:00 Arlen’s why

12:00 SCADA Protocol converters for legacy equipment to new SCADA

14:40 History of SCADA communications, ATT deal, deregulation,

16:15 VSAT on the scene

17:45 ATT VSAT utilizing TCP/IP (1998)

19:50 Decoupling IT Data and publishing to a broker with subscribers

20:20 SCADA Pub/Sub over VSAT for report by exception – the development story

26:30 Time to develop in preparation for TCP/IP

28:50 MQTT The backbone of pipelines, ATMs, social media messaging and more.

30:00 Why is MQTT so prolific in 2025?

31:30 MQTT Leveraging the best security technologies and TLS Certificates