There is a gulf between operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT). Both groups deal with similar things, software, computers, automation, so one would expect them to be the same, but they are not.
Differences
In IT new technologies are encouraged. Everyone wants the new monitors and laptops, the latest version of office software or database. In fact, continuous update is now the norm. Everyone in the company uses IT and it is common from company to company, even industry to industry. Using a human resources or accounting application is pretty much the same whether you are in manufacturing or retail.
OT differs from IT in three particular ways:
- stability
- security
- knowledge
We will discuss each of these three ways.
Stability
First, in OT stability trumps innovation. The factory must operate. Downtime has serious consequences. Innovation in OT is perceived as high risk while in IT not innovating is perceived as a risk. As such, innovation in OT proceeds very deliberately or is avoided entirely. A shop manager may ask, “Can you guarantee that the change will have no adverse effects?” No one can be 100% certain, so the change is blocked.
Security
Second, security has much higher perceived consequences in OT than in IT. A hacked piece of machinery could maim or kill someone. There are standards for separating networks on the factory floor from the Internet. Nevertheless, the security concerns can be taken to extreme. The perceived risk all too often outweighs the tangible improvements. The punishment of failure trumps the reward for success.
Knowledge
Third, few people use OT and even fewer are responsible for maintaining it. On many factory floors, teams are unwilling to touch a piece of automation because anyone who knew the system is retired. It works; leave it alone. At its extreme, OT appears as a sort of mystery cult, hidden behind walls of obfuscation and a zealous priesthood. Most OT professionals have not kept pace with the latest IT technologies. They are highly valued for knowing the legacy OT technologies. To be fair, is it logical for them to welcome changes that bring in technology they do not know and make obsolete the technology they do?
The culmination of these three factors is that the gulf between OT and IT has grown wider and wider. No one in IT knows what a MODBUS is. No one in OT knows what NodeJS is.
Democratize the data
The gulf between IT and OT is what is blocking the promise of the industrial internet of things (IIOT) and Industry 4.0. The people who know how to access the data, the OT team, know nothing about the new technologies such as machine learning and event source architecture. The people who know these new technologies, the IT team, know nothing about how to access the data. In fact, they are allowed nowhere near it for fear they will break something. To the OT team’s credit, that fear may be justified, but still blocks progress.
To move forward with Industry 4.0, we must democratize the data. That is, we must make the data produced on the factory floor available to everyone, both OT and IT, without compromising operations nor security.