Top Takeaways
This month, CESMII VP of Technology, Jonathan Wise, Flexware’s Brent Mehringer, and Ace Technology’s Craig Egan joined series host Mike Yost to take a closer look at what’s really going on with IT / OT convergence. When it comes to people, business, and technology alignment, organizations are finally stepping in the right direction. Here are three insights from each of our discussion areas:
Where are we today
- It’s (still) an “us vs them” mentality
- IT doesn’t know as much about OT as OT knows about IT
- New technologies are forcing conversations about who owns what and why
Technical viewpoint
- To integrate IT and OT, a technology layer must be built in order to map the two worlds together properly – this is required, and everyone will have to work through it
- Data without context is useless
- There is no vendor that will solve all technical problems, so make sure your solution has an emphasis on interoperability - building the right ecosystem is key
Advice
- Build the information model first then let OT and IT build their systems to meet the needs of the information model (hint: CESMII’s cloud library is a great place to start)
- Facts are different than data so make sure to implement solutions that lead to clean, contextualized data.
- Start the conversation with your teams today but remember that IT and OT often use similar tools and terminology for different tasks – be patient and encourage open dialogue
Check out the full episode and join your 600+ industry peers that tuned in to hear best practices for getting started.
Meet our guest speakers: