The current state of research on software-defined control systems was reviewed, and the role and development of control systems throughout the industrial revolutions were analyzed. The intelligent development direction for software-defined control systems was proposed. The case study of a software-defined end-edge-cloud collaborative PID(proportional-integral-derivative) tuning intelligence system was presented, which demonstrates that the tight conjoining and coordination between industrial artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, and other new-generation information technologies with software‐defined control systems has opened up a new way for the development of software-defined intelligent control systems. Finally, the principal research directions for software-defined intelligent control systems were pointed out by considering the challenges faced by software-defined control systems and those specific to their intelligent transformation.