Is your network ready for industrial digital transformation?
The Internet of Things (IoT), the cloud, and artificial intelligence (AI) are the most popular and most common referenced industrial digital transformation technologies. Thanks to these technological advances, preventive maintenance, production optimization, defective rates reduction, energy savings, carbon reduction, etc. are easily achieved. Supporting these technologies, however, requires a secure foundation that continuously deliver reliable operational (OT) data. Simply put, reliable industrial networking. Evolving OT Networks Industrial digital transformation continuously adds value to OT data, changing it both qualitatively and quantitatively. Alongside these core changes, industrial networking technology has also begun to evolve. In the beginning, most machines on factory floors were stand-alone operations, and OT data was mostly used to monitor and control the operation of specific equipment. Most of the data was confined to the devices in which they were generated and only transmitted through simple serial-based communication structures. However, as the need for automated systems arose, factories connected a variety of machines to communicate with each other. Two trends emerged: the amount of transmitted data increase tremendously and communication moved from a simple serial-based communication structure to a more complex one that integrated regional Ethernet. Industry 4.0 Era, a.k.a. the industrial digital transformation era, made it possible for customers to optimize the operation of their machines and move beyond the mere monitoring of them. One significant outcome is OT data’s new status as a building block of industrial digital transformation. To achieve the required levels of optimization, OT data needs to be transmitted to IT systems or the cloud for further analysis. So, we can no longer confine OT data to the devices that generate it. These developments have set in motion three significant transformations in industrial networking: From Intranet to the Internet: Breaking the Confines To allow OT data to flow smoothly between OT and IT […]