We will try to analyze, in this short space available to us, the possible consequences in the short and medium term of the inevitable convergence between “information technologies” (IT) and so-called “operation technologies” (OT).
OT is a term coined a few years ago to refer to the set of technologies used in industrial processes and also in infrastructure and infrastructure management. utilities, The Company's operations are carried out in the following areas.
The traditional IT systems are mostly applications running on relational databases, based on application servers and web environments. The OT systems, The majority of SCADA and MES applications are based on proprietary platforms of a few manufacturers (General Electric, Rockwell, Schneider and Siemens, among others).
In their early days, IT and OT technologies had very little in common. Industrial control systems ran on specific hardware, with real-time operating systems, and bore little resemblance to IT technologies that relied heavily on Intel hardware and the Microsoft family of operating systems.
It has been many years since IT and OT systems began to share standard hardware and software platforms and proprietary operating systems were abandoned.. OT systems have also been running on virtualization platforms such as VMware for some years now.
However, as of today, few other similarities can be found between the two worlds.. Neither the basic products used to create applications, nor the companies that lead each of the markets have anything to do with each other. The IT world is dominated by large database and corporate application providers (ERP, CRM, CMS, etc.) such as Oracle, HP, IBM, Microsoft, etc. Open Source products based on Linux have also made a strong entrance into the IT world, especially in web applications and mobile applications. The OT world, however, remains very focused on the Windows world, and evolves on the basis of the half dozen large multinational players that provide their products with few interoperability options between them.
However, these differences will not last forever. The winds of change are blowing, and some events that have started a few years ago and are happening right now in our environment, will generate an important evolution in the OT world that is difficult to know where it will take us and how it will end. Below, we talk about the key factors to consider when talking about IT-OT convergence:
The emergence of IoT
IoT is a term that has been buzzing for some time and will undoubtedly be one of the drivers of change. Until recently, IT systems were used to relate data to people, while OT systems were used to relate people to electromechanical devices. With the emergence of the IoT, this paradigm has changed. Now the big players in the IT world want to interact with physical devices and are offering solutions that in many respects can already be used to interact with physical devices. compete with the traditional SCADA systems offerings. Big names in the IT sector (such as Microsoft, SAP, HP and Red Hat) are starting to offer integration platforms for devices over the Internet. The classic players in the OT world have reacted quickly in order not to lose their position and companies such as GE, Schneider and Siemens are also starting to offer their platforms. However, they maintain their classic offer of SCADA systems still quite detached from these new platforms.
The most visionary customers, the early-adopters, In the last few years, they have begun to consider alternatives with IoT to meet some challenges that, until recently, would have been solved without any doubt with traditional SCADA systems.
Big Data
As is also the case with IoT, Big Data is one of the concepts that are “in” right now. But What do Big Data technologies bring to the OT world? Well, the truth is that a lot... For years, the IT world has had wonderful Business Intelligence, analytics, data presentation and statistical analysis applications. There were many tools to choose from on the market, which made it possible to work with several of them simultaneously on the same databases to provide different functionalities.
The OT world, on the other hand, has always been of the HistorianEach manufacturer provided its own historization tool, with its corresponding advantages and limitations, for data capture, storage and visualization.
At the most, some manufacturers provided a single market tool, adapted to their own Historian for the realization of reports custom-made.
What were the reasons for these restrictions in the OT world? Basically, there were two: “Traditional” databases were claimed to be primarily “query” oriented, while software was claimed to be "query" oriented, while "traditional" databases were claimed to be "query" oriented, while software was claimed to be "query" oriented. Historian were “insertion” oriented. In short, another myth that falls with the rise of Big Data: Today, Whatsapp or Twiter servers perform more insertions in their databases than the largest refinery in the world can perform in its Historian.
The second reluctance of the Historian was the “big volume” of data to be handled and the need for data compression... but that's what Big Data is all about, isn't it?
The eventual replacement of the software Historian by Big Data tools may be just getting started. When will the first Historian based on Hadoop or Cassandra?
Users also demand the possibility of exploiting the data with any analytics tool on the market and not be tied to the tool provided by the provider of the analytics solution. Historian. The BI world will enter strongly as a complement to data warehousing software, because it is a real need that customers demand.
Cloud
The eternal discussion about the internet security and the eternal question of “what if I run out of Internet access?”, many end users are beginning to identify the advantages of working in the cloud.
What if we put the MES system in the cloud? What if we open it through an API so that third party companies can market App's that offer additional functionalities? What if we create a Store to download Apps? What if we pay per use? It seems a powerful business model and worthy of consideration.
Anyway, there is a lot to discuss, and I just wanted to raise some questions that arise in our day-to-day work as integrators. Finally, I wanted to start a debate... Place your bets!
Which company will lead the OT market in ten years?
a) Siemens b) Schneider c) General Electric
d) SAP e) Oracle f) Microsoft g) Other