Analysts, journalists and others agree that the convergence of Information Technology (IT) with Operational Technology (OT) is one of the key drivers of this transformation. Yet many people are confused about the IIoT, and how to implement a successful IT/OT convergence strategy. For example, if you are a business or technology leader responsible for your company’s IIoT efforts, you might be asking yourself questions like:
As one of the market leaders in delivering the IIoT solutions that enable Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and other companies to converge IT with OT, Sierra Wireless has some ideas on how to answer these questions.
While not the first (or last) word on the subject, we hope this Q&A will help you understand IT/OT convergence better, and accelerate your journey to implementing an IT/OT convergence strategy that improves business outcomes for both you and your customers.
Information Technology (IT) is technology that is primarily used to collect, manipulate, analyze, and generate insights from information (i.e. data).
In the business world, IT (usually consisting of computing, network and data storage technologies) can be something as simple as a standalone spreadsheet program an accountant uses to build a business model on their laptop. Or it can be as complex as a cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application that employees throughout a company use to manage inventory, billing, shipping, and other core business processes.
Operational technology (OT) is technology that is primarily used to monitor and control physical operations.
OT, like IT, consists of computing, networking, and storage technologies. But OT uses these technologies for a different purpose -- to process or communicate information related to the management of physical processes. Examples of these processes include how much water a water pump is pumping, how much electricity is being stored in an industrial battery, or how fast a building’s HVAC fans are spinning.
OT systems can vary greatly in complexity – they can be as simple as a sensor that tracks the location of a shipping container, or as complex as a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system used to monitor and control a utility’s electric grid or a manufacturer’s assembly line.
Though the line between IT and OT can at times be blurry, the difference between the two really comes down to how they are used.
IT is generally focused on the collection and manipulation of information that can be used by companies to manage business processes or generate insights. OT is generally focused on the collection and manipulation of information that can be used by companies to manage machines or other equipment that is engaged in physical processes.
In the past, IT has been associated with offices and white-collar work, while OT has been associated with factories, warehouses, shipping, and other blue-collar work. Yet, increasingly companies want to align these different types of work with each other – which is one of the reasons why companies want to connect their IT systems to their OT systems.
A major reason why OT has remained separate from IT is that they started on different paths. Only in recent years, has more powerful computing, better networking, improved storage and new IoT technologies become available that allow OT and IT systems to easily share data with each other.
IT first originated with mainframe computers, then evolved to include personal computers and file servers. Further advances in computing, data storage, and networking led to the rise of the Internet and the cloud-based ERP, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Intelligence (BI) and the other IT systems that we are familiar with today.
OT started with companies integrating direct digital control technologies into machines and other types of equipment. Over time, OT has used many of the same technological advancements that drove the development of IT to advance, with companies integrating programmable logical controllers into their equipment and deploying robotics.
Today, companies deploy many different types of OT systems for managing physical processes, including SCADA systems, Computer Numerical Control (CNC) systems and Building Automation Systems (BAS).
Yet, many of these OT systems were not designed to be integrated with IT systems. For example, many of them use communications protocols and standards, like DNP3 or Modbus, not used by IT systems. These integration challenges, along with security concerns, high upfront cost, difficult to calculate ROIs forecasts, IIoT connectivity difficulties and other challenges have helped keep IT and OT systems separate.
IT/OT convergence connects IT systems to OT systems, allowing them to transmit data to each other. The goal of IT/OT convergence is to use this connectivity to enhance the value these systems deliver.
For example, being able to collect, manipulate and analyze data from OT systems enables companies to better use their IT systems to streamline business processes and generate insights that can be used to foster innovation, or introduce new services. Meanwhile, with OT systems that can be updated or optimized with data from IT systems, companies can improve how these OT systems manage various physical operations.
Many companies converge IT with OT in order to use OT data to enhance IT systems in ways that allow them to improve business operations, or generate valuable insights. Companies also converge IT with OT in order to use IT data to enhance their OT systems, so they can perform physical operations better.
Examples of popular use cases for IT/OT convergence include:
Equipment-as-a-service (EaaS), in which OEMs offer their customers “pay-as-you-go” services, so they pay them based on how much they use an asset, rather than purchasing the asset outright.
These examples of IT/OT convergence use cases show how by integrating data from OT systems into IT systems, companies can improve business operators and generate valuable insights.
Other IT/OT convergence use cases show how IT systems can deliver data to OT systems that improve physical operations.
As these use cases demonstrate, with IT/OT convergence companies can use their IT systems to streamline processes and generate better insights and their OT systems to operate equipment more efficiently and effectively – resulting in smarter factories, warehouses, energy grids, supply chains and buildings.
IIoT technologies serve as the “bridge” connecting IT to OT (and vice versa).
To successfully implement an IT/OT convergence strategy, you need IIoT infrastructure (consisting primarily of edge devices, wireless networks and cloud APIs). IIoT infrastructure securely orchestrates the collection, transmission, and processing of data between IT and OT systems. It uses edge devices to extract data from industrial equipment and then filter, prioritize, and otherwise process this data, wireless networks to send this data to the cloud, and then cloud APIs to integrate this data into cloud-based IT systems. IIoT infrastructure makes sure the right data gets sent to the right system, at the right time, with the right priority.
You also need an IIoT application (consisting of a distributed IIoT application, built on a cloud IoT platform but running on both edge devices and in the cloud) that works with IIoT infrastructure to tell the IT and OT systems exactly how, when, and in what way you want to collect, transmit, and process their data.
To see what we mean, let’s look at an example of IT/OT convergence, greatly simplified for clarity.
An air compressor company wants to offer a new pay-as-you-go EaaS offering to its customers.
Though many companies are still at the beginning stage of using the IIoT to implement an IT/OT convergence strategy, many benefits of IT/OT convergence are already becoming clear.
Less Downtime and Lower Maintenance Costs:
New Services and Revenue Streams:
Improved Innovation:
Streamline, Automate, and Optimize Business and Physical Processes:
While IT/OT convergence benefits can be significant, many companies have struggled to use IIoT technologies to connect their OT systems to their IT systems. Some of the challenges they have faced include:
While these challenges vary, one commonality unites them – the complexity involved building the IIoT infrastructure required for IT/OT convergence. Building and maintaining the IIoT infrastructure needed to securely connect IT systems to OT systems requires a wide variety of specialized expertise in a range of complex subjects, including embedded device firmware, wireless connectivity, IT/OT convergence security, and cloud application development, among others.
Acquiring all this expertise, and then using it to build from the ground up the IIoT infrastructure needed for IT/OT convergence is not a simple task – which is one of the key reasons that, in a recent survey of IoT adopters conducted by Beecham Research, 58 percent of the respondents stated that their IoT project was either mostly unsuccessful or not successful.
Fortunately, new IIoT innovations can help address the challenges mentioned above by simplifying the complexity involved in IT/OT convergence. In particular, new all-in-one, edge-to-cloud IIoT solutions provide OEMs with all (or most) of the IIoT infrastructure they need to reliably and securely connect their IT systems to their OT systems.
For example, Sierra Wireless’s Octave solution securely integrates edge devices, wireless networks, and cloud APIs into a single solution for converging IT systems with OT systems. Octave addresses many of the complexity challenges described above by delivering customers:
Octave also enables OEMs to easily clone one device’s attributes to other devices at a massive scale, and configure, update, and manage all of their edge devices’ rules, making it easier to scale and update IIoT applications over time.
In addition to the emergence of all-in-one IIoT infrastructure solutions like Octave, Microsoft, AWS, and other cloud service providers, they now offer new cloud platforms designed for the IoT. For example, Microsoft’s Azure IoT Central provides OEMs with a fully managed global IoT SaaS (software as a service) solution that they can use to quickly build and easily manage IIoT applications that converge OT systems with IT systems.
IIoT infrastructure and application innovations like these are helping to “cloudify” the IIoT, allowing OEMs to essentially plug their OT systems into their IT systems rather than build their own solutions for this convergence themselves.
There are a wide variety of research firm reports and media articles that can provide you with more background on IT/OT convergence and guidance on how to develop a successful IT/OT convergence strategy, including:
In addition, you can read some of our eBooks, articles, reports and white papers or view our webinars and videos on how to use the IIoT to implement an IT/OT convergence strategy that accelerates a data-driven transformation of your business:
And, of course, you can Start with Sierra, and contact us directly to discuss how we can help you use the IIoT to converge your IT with OT in ways that empower you to create value in today’s connected economy.