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.