IT/OT Convergence—Understanding Perceptions, Attitudes and Knowledge

At the “Y-NOW 2020: DX Solutions for Tomorrow” event, which took place November 10-12, speakers presented on all aspects of digital transformation. A series of panel discussions provided considerable guidance to participants who are contemplating the digital transformation journey or seeking best practices for their next steps.

Planning for Digital Transformation and Keeping it on Track to Deliver Optimal Outcomes

Even though digital transformation is much more than IT/OT convergence, the latter still presents a major hurdle. Overcoming it is critical. This blog outlines some of the Y-Now 2020 panel discussion key takeaways about the occasionally adversarial relationship between IT and OT organizations can be transformed to consistently achieve safe, secure, reliable and profitable operations.

One of the points of discussion was that in order to navigate the gulf between the IT and OT organizations, the digital transformation program team must first be fully aware of the perceptions, attitudes and knowledge that abound in each of them.

In a discussion on that topic, Joe Perino, Principal Research Analyst with LNS Research, stated that, traditionally, IT focused on data preservation and protection while OT was responsible for safe, reliable, secure control of operations. He went on to ask what IT/OT convergence is.

Raj Agnihotri, Lead for Downstream, Chemicals, LNG and Capital Projects at IBM, defined IT/OT convergence as “the realization of factors that bring them together in such a way that the organization treats information management as a single corporate asset. It addresses architecture, organization, and all the ways that information is used. While OT deals with manufacturing and controllability, IT information leads to the larger enterprise. Information easily moves across the IT/OT interface and is treated as an asset across the entire enterprise.”

According to Joseph Ting, VP–Digital Transformation, IIoT and Customer Experience Leader for Yokogawa, “OT is the technology that enables the manufacturing of goods and services and bringing them to market. But it encompasses not only manufacturing and the supply chain but all operations including sales, marketing, HR, and legal. IT provides an enterprise-wide view that uses technologies such as the cloud, AI, and agile development, and is responsible for the user experience.”

Is there a formula for successful convergence of IT and OT? What has worked and what hasn’t? Andy’s experience is that “poor projects are run primarily one way or the other: by IT with little participation on the part of OT—or vice versa. That simply enables existing processes to continue with very little improvement.”

Raj stated, “we have seen the injection of IT people into OT organizations to bring IT technology into the OT world; however, a better approach seems to be the injection of OT literacy or upskilling into the IT function. For companies using control systems from more than one supplier, that enables corporate-wide engineering and standardization of automation across multiple plants.”

He added that another successful implementation consisted of IT people reporting to and supporting the OT department with a dotted line to IT management. In practically all cases, managers in merged IT/OT positions are inevitably amazed how each discipline has had a complete misunderstanding of the other.

New Skillsets Required

IT/OT convergence has not only illustrated the requirement for cross-skilling between IT and OT, it has also underscored the need for completely new skill sets. It is not simply a matter of teaching IT skills to the OT people and OT skills to the IT people. As Raj stated, “today, more people do understand both technologies.”

David Parsons, Director, Refinery Models for Valero, observed, “like most companies in our industry, traditionally, we would just hire chemical engineers,” whereupon Nick added, “then, we were saying that we’ll have to teach chemical engineering to the IT people.” Meanwhile, as Simon Rogers, VP Digital Solutions for Yokogawa reminisced, “others were saying that the chemical engineers needed to learn more about IT!”

Among the new skills David identified, data science is the most prominent. He has also recently hired a computational physicist. “People with these skills bring a different perspective to the group. We have a PhD in statistics, and I find myself speaking with him more and more.” Nick added that, “it takes a diverse team with a growth mindset.” 

Levels to the Cloud

Discussions went on to address the differences between IT and OT technologies. Joe stated that “traditional ISA95 architecture had IT and OT merging—or butting heads—at level 3. What has changed?”

Raj answered, “early on, some companies were adding layers such as 2.5, 2.6, 3.1, 3.2, etc. to that architecture with much separation between IT and OT continuing. In the future, in an extreme case of autonomous operations, you could not separate them while recognizing controllability aspects of OT. Once you can take OT data to the Cloud, securely, that is a huge step toward convergence.”

Joseph recalled Metcalfe’s law, a network theory, which states that the value of the network increases in proportion to the square of the number of nodes. “For 50 years, OT has been an island, air-gapped, disconnected on purpose because it is mission-critical and cannot fail. Today, IT/OT convergence presents an opportunity for a massive increase in productivity that companies now realize outweighs the risks. They know that they must go ahead and tackle very serious risks such as cybersecurity.”

Figure 1 Metcalfe's law - source: www.embrkbusiness.medium.com

But it always comes back to business objectives over technology. As Joseph stated, “ultimately, the company must move away from the highly-layered technical architecture and be sure to strategically align with C-suite objectives.”

To learn more about the consequences of IT/OT convergence, download our eBook about digital transformation in the process industry.