Salem Automation, Inc.

Salem Automation, Inc. Salem Automation is a Managed Service Provider specializing in Systems Automation, Legacy Systems Virtualization, and Cloud Hosting.

A distribution and manufacturing company had been running its core business data on a legacy database for nearly 30 year...
06/10/2026

A distribution and manufacturing company had been running its core business data on a legacy database for nearly 30 years. It still worked — until the platform went unsupported, leaving business-critical data trapped with no modern way to reach it.

Salem Automation migrated the master records onto a modern, maintainable application — with 100% data fidelity, zero records lost.

End of life doesn't have to mean end of the road.

Read the full case study here →
https://www.salemautomation.com/case-study/migrating-a-30-year-old-database-to-a-modern-application-stack/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=introduction

A Tier 1 North American manufacturer was running mission-critical operations on end-of-life SCADA and DOS-based HMI plat...
06/08/2026

A Tier 1 North American manufacturer was running mission-critical operations on end-of-life SCADA and DOS-based HMI platforms. The software was no longer vendor-supported, modern engineers couldn't maintain it, and it couldn't talk to the enterprise systems that the business now depends on.

The hard part: decades of irreplaceable process knowledge were encoded in that legacy logic and the plant had zero tolerance for extended outages.

Our approach was to migrate, not gut:

→ Replaced aging HMI and legacy SCADA with a modern Ignition platform, preserving every piece of operator functionality
→ Rewrote legacy FORTRAN logic into maintainable Python and C #
→ Ran the new system in parallel with the old one using a phased Shadow Mode strategy — maintain uptime throughout the transition
→ Delivered full operator documentation and on-site training aligned to go-live

The result: a supportable, modern control environment ready for OT/IT integration and remote monitoring — with decades of proprietary process knowledge fully intact and not a single line of logic lost.

That's what dual fluency in legacy and modern platforms looks like: modernization without the risk.

Read the full case study →
https://www.salemautomation.com/case-study/legacy-scada-replacement-for-a-tier-1-industrial-manufacturer/

There's no better validation than hearing directly from an IT leader at a major energy company that their deployment wen...
05/28/2026

There's no better validation than hearing directly from an IT leader at a major energy company that their deployment went smoothly — and that they're looking forward to years of reliable use from the solution.

After completing a multi-site migration to vtAlpha, the client described the process as seamless and expressed strong confidence in the platform's long-term value.

In critical infrastructure environments like energy, there's zero room for disruption. Systems have to work, and migrations have to be invisible to operations. That's the standard we hold ourselves to — and it's gratifying when a client confirms we met it.

Proud of the team's work on this one.

This Memorial Day, we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation.Their courage and dedication ...
05/25/2026

This Memorial Day, we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation.

Their courage and dedication are the foundation of the freedoms we hold dear — including the freedom to build, to innovate, and to serve our communities through the work we do every day.

Revolutionize your IT experienceAt Salem Automation, we tailor solutions to your unique environment—because your success...
05/21/2026

Revolutionize your IT experience

At Salem Automation, we tailor solutions to your unique environment—because your success drives ours. With hands-on expertise and a commitment to guiding your modernization journey, we deliver results that matter. 🚀

Step into the future with us. Your edge starts here!

The buried lie: when data doesn't need to be replaced, it needs to be reached.There's a moment every golfer knows. Your ...
05/20/2026

The buried lie: when data doesn't need to be replaced, it needs to be reached.

There's a moment every golfer knows. Your ball lands in soft sand or thick, heavy rough, and you walk up to it already recalculating. Your normal approach isn't going to work. You need a different club, a different swing, and probably a little more patience than you planned on.

The ball isn't gone. You can see exactly where it is. But getting to it cleanly — without making things worse — takes a specific kind of skill.

That's what legacy data looks like inside a lot of industrial organizations.

The data exists. Decades of it, in many cases: process records, batch histories, configuration files, transactional logs. But it's sitting in Sybase databases that haven't had vendor support in years. Or in applications built on OpenVMS that no modern API can handshake with. Or in proprietary formats that only one person on staff still understands — and they're two years from retirement.

None of this is lost data. It's buried data. And the difference matters, because buried data doesn't need to be replaced. It needs to be reached.

That's a big part of what we do at Salem Automation. We specialize in the legacy platforms that most modernization partners walk past — VAX/VMS, Alpha, Sybase, FORTRAN-based applications, aging control system logic. We don't rip and replace. We build access paths: emulation layers, database bridges, application interfaces that bring trapped data into formats and environments that modern tools can actually use.

Your data has been recording the story of your operation for years. The question isn't whether it has value; it's whether you can get to it before the last person who knows where it's buried walks out the door.

Here's where that work starts: https://www.salemautomation.com/services/database-management/

There's a version of the AI conversation that skips the hard part.It goes like this: buy a platform, connect your data, ...
05/18/2026

There's a version of the AI conversation that skips the hard part.

It goes like this: buy a platform, connect your data, deploy a model, get insights. From a high view, it looks like a six-month project.

But for industrial manufacturers running legacy control systems, decades-old databases, and proprietary SCADA platforms, that version of the story leaves out where most of the effort actually lives.

AI is only as smart as the data it can access and the context it's given. If your process data is trapped in a Sybase database no modern tool can connect to — or your batch records live in an application written in FORTRAN on a VAX system — or your historian data, MES data, and ERP data have never been in the same room together — then AI doesn't have much to work with.

A recent article in Automation World put it well: the organizations that will succeed in the next wave of AI adoption aren't the ones with the most data. They're the ones who can contextualize it best. That means mapping your systems, standardizing your semantics, and capturing the cause-and-effect relationships your experienced operators carry in their heads.

That's the work we do at Salem Automation. Not the AI part — the part that makes AI possible.

We modernize the legacy infrastructure layer: the databases, the control platforms, the application logic that sits between your plant floor and your enterprise systems. We make your data accessible, integrable, and maintainable — so that when you're ready for AI, your foundation is ready too.

If your AI roadmap is stalling at the integration layer, this might be the conversation to have first.

Here's where that work starts: https://www.salemautomation.com/services/legacy-modernization-services/

05/13/2026

Salem Automation visits PARSEC Group and BCL! 🐾

Our Salem Automation team made the trip out to Colorado to visit our sister companies under the IT Service Alliance umbrella — PARSEC Group and BCL!

PARSEC is an enterprise IT consulting and training firm. They help companies run, maintain, and train staff on legacy and enterprise operating systems such as Open VMS, AIX, Tru64 UNIX, HP-UX, Oracle Solaris and Linux

BCL Mainframe Services provides enterprise-grade hosting, seamless disaster recovery, and 24/7 support to keep your mainframe secure, resilient, and running at peak performance

We were greeted by a couple of their best employees, who made sure to check in on us throughout the entire visit. Attentive, dedicated, and very good at their jobs — even if their primary skills are tail-wagging and looking adorable.

Thanks for the warm welcome, PARSEC and BCL team (two- and four-legged alike). Here's to continued collaboration across the ITSA family.

60–80% of IT budgets in legacy environments go to one thing: keeping the lights on.That's not a guess — it's what Emkay ...
05/11/2026

60–80% of IT budgets in legacy environments go to one thing: keeping the lights on.

That's not a guess — it's what Emkay Research found earlier this year. The vast majority of IT spend in legacy-heavy organizations is consumed by maintenance alone, leaving almost nothing for the investments that actually move the business forward.

And here's what makes it worse: the longer you wait, the more expensive it gets. Reactive fixes — emergency patches, unplanned migrations, compliance scrambles — almost always cost more than a planned approach.

A phased modernization program changes the math. Instead of ripping and replacing overnight (and absorbing all that risk at once), you move in stages — stabilizing what you have, then modernizing strategically as budget and priorities allow.

That's exactly how we work with our clients at Salem Automation. Our four-stage modernization path starts where you are today — whether that's extending the life of OpenVMS through emulation, modernizing legacy applications and databases, or planning a full platform migration. Each phase delivers value on its own, so you're never betting the whole budget on a single cutover.

If your IT dollars are going to maintenance instead of momentum, let's talk about what a realistic path forward looks like.

Contact us at [email protected]

Visit us at https://www.salemautomation.com/

Your business is fashion and fine stationery — not troubleshooting a 40-year-old operating system at 7 AM on a Monday.Bu...
05/06/2026

Your business is fashion and fine stationery — not troubleshooting a 40-year-old operating system at 7 AM on a Monday.

But when a network switch fails and your OpenVMS environment goes dark, that's exactly where your morning goes.

Unless someone else already has it covered.

The companies that run best on legacy systems aren't the ones with the biggest IT departments. They're the ones with the right partners — people who already know the platform, already have the expertise, and can get you back online remotely before most of your team even notices something went wrong.

That's what Salem Automation does. We handle the complexity of legacy IT so you can stay focused on what you actually do best.

If your business still runs on OpenVMS, VMS, or Alpha-based systems, let's talk. Your next outage doesn't have to be a crisis.

Read the full case study here:
https://www.salemautomation.com/case-study/vtalpha-application-level-3-support/

Address

3909 Westpoint Boulevard Suite C
Winston-Salem, NC
27103

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

Telephone

(336) 661-0890

Website

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