What is the purpose of the Ethernet/IP and Modbus TCP I/O Cards? You can already access E/IP and Modbus TCP from Node-red or python with a standard Raspberry Pi.
I never went to college for engineering but I've worked in the electrical engineering field for the past 11 years doing controls and automation. I have programmed A-B, Modicon, GE and Siemens PLC and HMI/SCADA systems.
The only businesses I really hear about anyone starting is an integrator shop. Not much smaller time software stuff other than OPC servers and active-x or .NET controls for SCADA work.
No. Recent version of AutoCAD are customizable via .NET and core libraries that ship as part of AutoCAD are written in .NET too. If you have AutoCAD installed look at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R18.1\ACAD-9007:409\Applications, all of the sub entries that have a entry MANAGED of Type REG_DWORD with a value of 1 are .NET extensions. With that being said they either have to ship Mono with the Mac version or rewrite a ton of code in C++.
Disclaimer: I write PLC & SCADA system code for a living in the industrial and wastewater markets.
Real time plant floor control/monitoring is not an unsolved problem and an iPad/tablet accessible web app was not the solution. See page 12 of the link below[1] for an example of what industry really works with. In some applications seconds can cost thousands of dollars, a limb or even a life. I'd never leave that up to a web browsers JavaScript engine.
It doesn't mention IP ratings but I guess you could use something like that. I never would and I certainly wouldn't submit that in a proposal to a client.
Google indexes the internet, twitter indexes twitter. Which do you think will provide a more useful data set for marketing research?
Heck of all the people I know I can't think of a single person that uses twitter. However I can think of a dozen or two that have written product/service reviews somewhere on the internet, which would be indexed by Google.