Edge Computing Bridges IT and OT to Accelerate Shared Digital Initiatives
IT leaders are achieving IT/OT convergence by deploying edge computing platforms to increase reliability, modernize operations, manage critical data from edge to cloud, and ensure cybersecurity.
White Paper
The worlds of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) are converging. Not just IT and OT technologies—which are undoubtedly transforming and advancing with Industry 4.0, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), AI, and big data—but how teams are partnering across functions to align on IT infrastructure and system requirements to deliver business value and capability.
Integrating IT systems, such as data centers, digital networks, and help desks with OT systems including HMI/SCADA, PLCs, industrial equipment, and other manufacturing systems, is essential for the seamless sharing of critical data. This trend is becoming more prevalent as IT teams are brought in to support digital transformation in the OT space.
In the OT environment, deploying compute infrastructure close to critical equipment and processes, including remote locations, is a requirement for success and innovation.
Reliable edge computing platforms are helping organizations meet the growing demands of digital operations and these organizations are finding success converging IT and OT to solve operational challenges by combining IT tools with OT expertise and knowledge.
In this white paper, learn how edge computing is helping companies overcome challenges related to IT/OT convergence, bridging the gap between IT and OT, improving uptime, modernizing legacy infrastructure, enhancing data management and integration, and more.
What is edge computing?
Edge computing is a distributed computing model in which data collection, aggregation, processing, and analysis takes place at the edge of operations—where data is generated—rather than on a centralized server or in the cloud. In a manufacturing environment, for example, an edge computing platform collects critical data from sensors and equipment and processes that information in near real-time. By accelerating time to actionable insights, edge computing empowers organizations to maximize operational efficiency, improve performance, and automate business processes, ensuring continuous availability.
Regional data center edge, global data center
Compute & local data center
Device gateway, compute edge
In the OT environment, industrial PCs (IPCs) lack the computing power and reliability necessary for effective long-term operations. Although IPCs are ruggedized, they can only run one application at a time, each requiring individual maintenance, which could be in hard-to-reach locations. If something breaks, the IT team supporting and managing these computers must respond to urgent tickets while also navigating tech refresh needs, unplanned downtime, break-fix issues, and other concerns. Organizations require computing power to run industrial applications, with IT teams needing a familiar paradigm in the OT setting to support OT needs. Purpose-built edge computing platforms provide that landing spot and a foundation to build upon.
Conversely, the sophistication of modern compute infrastructure requires the oversight of IT teams. Because of this sophistication, OT teams have brought IT into the discussion in recent years. Edge computing infrastructure must meet IT’s requirements for interoperability, manageability, cost, and importantly, security. Together IT and OT teams are looking for one platform that meets current and future needs with simple management and repeatability.
According to Gartner, “By year-end 2026, 70% of large enterprises will have a documented strategy for edge computing, compared to fewer than 10% in 2023.”1 Given the potential benefits for IT and OT teams alike, this strategy should include leveraging edge computing to accelerate IT/OT convergence.
Why bring IT and OT together
Historically, companies have had dedicated IT and OT teams that work independently of one another.
IT teams are primarily responsible for information processing as well as maintaining, configuring, and securing hardware and software systems. This includes the management and updates of software applications, servers, and IT infrastructure. These systems act as repositories for enterprise data and make data available to business applications and their users as needed.
OT teams focus on the monitoring and control of physical devices and machinery as well as manufacturing systems and processes that take place on the shopfloor or in other industrial locations. The OT network of devices and software supports specialized gear to capture and relay data enabling industrial equipment to perform specific tasks.
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Despite operating in very different environments, IT and OT teams share a number of goals, including system modernization and continuous availability, and overlap in other activities such as patching and maintenance. IT teams must follow existing protocols but also coordinate with OT to avoid business disruptions. Reliability is also key—IT teams require reliability for remote management and monitoring whereas OT teams require reliability to ensure production continues without unplanned downtime. Both need operations to be secure, future proof, and easy to deploy and maintain—especially in organizations with limited IT expertise.
IT/OT convergence leverages edge computing capabilities to establish a single, unified environment that supports data collection, sharing, and analysis. This approach also generates substantial value, including improved performance and efficiencies, increased resilience, and greater adaptability.
From an architecture standpoint, IT/OT convergence merges IT infrastructure with industrial, manufacturing, and process control systems to share the data that each collects and distributes (see Figure 1 – IT/OT convergence). With autonomous, fault-tolerant edge computing platforms, companies can advance their IT/OT convergence strategies with confidence.
IT/OT convergence
Vital infrastructure required for data processing.
IT systems are repositories for an enterprise’s critical information. They include digital networks, the cloud, data centers, and more. Through IT systems, data is made available to different business applications and their users.
With an edge computing platform—that processes data in near real-time at the edge of operations—it’s easy to merge IT and OT teams that often work independently, pooling resources, technologies, specialized knowledge, and expertise. The platform also makes data sharing seamless by providing a consistent landing spot for IT teams in the OT environment. IT
Consolidating IT and OT networks and sharing all data collected, analyzed, and distributed.
OT
Network of operational devices and software involved in manufacturing, industrial, and control systems.
OT systems collect operational data that enables industrial equipment to perform tasks, alerts OT teams to potential failures, ensures continuous operations, and more.
Challenges of IT/OT convergence
Despite the many benefits of IT/OT convergence, making the transition is not without its challenges. As technology advances, many OT systems that have traditionally been handled by OT staff—including PLCs, HMI/SCADA, industrial equipment and machinery, supply chain management, manufacturing execution systems (MES), asset performance management (APM), and more—are increasingly coming under the purview of IT. As a result, IT teams now need a solid understanding of these OT systems and their operational requirements. They may also confront other challenges depending on the level of system interoperability and technical complexity.
Figure I. IT/OT convergence merges critical IT infrastructure with OT devices and software, each distinct network shares data collected and distributed by IT and OT systems, allowing teams to enhance operational efficiency by pooling crucial resources and expertise.
Data management and integration, along with cybersecurity, are two areas of constant concern for IT and OT teams alike. Edge computing platforms can mitigate challenges related to these issues and simplify the process of IT/OT convergence.
Data management and integration
There are several variables to consider when managing and integrating data for IT/OT convergence, including:
Data volume, velocity, and variety: Converging IT and OT creates a huge volume, velocity, and variety of data. This data is produced from many different IT and OT sources, such as digital networks, production equipment sensors, devices, machines, and more. Managing the different data streams can pose challenges for any organization.
Data security and privacy: IT/OT convergence can expose sensitive and confidential data to potential security risks, especially as each team has differing security protocols and requirements.
Data silos: Disparate IT and OT systems often create data silos, making it extremely difficult to access and analyze this data to better understand operations and make critical business decisions.
Data governance: IT/OT convergence requires implementing data governance strategies that ensure data consistency, control, and compliance (e.g., SOX compliance) both internally and externally.
An edge computing platform plays a crucial role in addressing data management and integration challenges. By processing and analyzing data at the source, edge computing can significantly reduce the volume of data that needs to be transmitted and stored in the cloud or on-premises data centers. Local data processing also reduces the amount of data moving across networks, helping lower the risk of potential security threats. It can also enforce data governance policies at the source, ensuring data consistency, control, and compliance with industry standards and regulations.
An edge computing platform also enhances data-driven decision-making. Not only is crucial data from IT and OT applications shared and analyzed, but with reduced data transmission latency, systems respond to changing conditions in near real-time, improving energy efficiency and minimizing waste reduction that can help enterprises advance sustainability initiatives.
Cybersecurity
IT teams rely on regular software updates to protect an organization from possible vulnerabilities, whereas OT teams often run manufacturing operations using legacy hardware and software, opening them up to potential cyberattacks. According to CISA, there is an an effort by the U.S. Government and many software vendors—including Rockwell Automation, AVEVA, Inductive Automation, and others—to improve cybersecurity monitoring for industrial control systems (ICS) to protect critical infrastructure. With this being said, substantial risks remain.
One reason organizations hesitate about IT/OT convergence is that bringing IT and OT systems together increases the potential cyberattack surface. Because of this, robust cybersecurity measures—including remote access, data encryption, intrusion detection, and integration of IT security best practices into OT environments—are a must-have for any IT/OT convergence effort.
Process integrity is also fundamental in managing OT cybersecurity, especially when it comes to asset visibility and understanding changes to processes and equipment. Given the large amount of data produced by both IT and OT systems, enterprises must carefully manage data and changes to configurations and permissions to identify and counteract potential risks.
For example, for an organization to meet and adhere to SOC 2 standards, processing integrity ensures that all elements within the audited system are complete, valid, accurate, timely, and authorized.
An edge computing platform serves as an additional security layer between IT and OT systems. It provides a protected local environment for securing data and applications, running cybersecurity protocols, and maintaining visibility across the OT infrastructure. This advantage coupled with an edge computing platform’s ability to reduce the amount of data being transmitted between IT and OT networks, as well as the cloud, lowers the risks of data exposure and cyberattacks.
How edge computing is a common ground for IT/OT convergence
Effective IT/OT convergence starts with a simple, protected, and autonomous edge computing platform. By leveraging edge computing, not only can manufacturers manage vast amounts of data and improve cybersecurity measures, but many organizations have found success with the following:
Providing an IT landing zone in the OT environment
IT teams have crucial tools and technologies that help accelerate digital transformation in OT environments. A scalable and purpose-built edge computing solution gives IT teams a familiar landing zone in the OT environment, allowing IT managers to run their IT standards on OT applications. This provides critical insights and tools for both IT and OT teams.
Edge computing platforms can also help reduce the overall IT footprint. By consolidating applications and workloads to a single, fault-tolerant edge computing platform, IT teams can run a greater number of applications in support of OT operations more reliably and more efficiently, improving performance while reducing cost.
For example, with an edge computing platform, IT and OT teams are able to organize local data and feed it into the advanced analysis of APM solutions in the cloud without concerns about bandwidth and data management. The local compute power provided by the platform unburdens the network by reducing the need for continuous communication with centralized servers. As a result, organizations have the infrastructure to more easily apply equipment health monitoring to detect potential failures and run predictive maintenance. The virtualization and workload consolidation made possible with edge computing allows enterprises to adopt various IT-driven capabilities locally, leading to enhanced operational efficiencies and streamlined operations.
IT/OT convergence gives organizations a competitive edge as they can respond quickly to changing market conditions and better meet customer demands.
Bringing IT and OT technologies together on a simple, protected, and autonomous edge computing platform bridges the gap between IT and OT teams, empowering collaboration, improving productivity, enhancing decision-making, and allocating resources more effectively.
Deploying fault tolerance anywhere to improve uptime and reliability
In the OT environment, unplanned downtime is not an option. If production stops, costs go up. IT teams work to prevent downtime by using standardized systems that are fail-safe and easy to manage. Implementing a fault-tolerant edge computing platform protects both IT and OT data and applications from disruptions and downtime, ensuring operations continue and applications and data are always available.
A platform with built-in redundancy and failover replicates systems so that they can resume at a moment’s notice. In the event of a failure, the application will failover to the secondary system and resume running without interruption. As enterprises leverage virtualization to combine physical systems, failover applications running on virtual machines (VMs) make the most of the portability that VMs provide.
Advanced edge computing platforms utilize redundant hardware and intelligent, proactive failover capabilities to automatically take action to avoid a system outage if a hardware failure is identified or if a potential hardware failure is predicted. With continuous system health monitoring, the system can take action to restore system health and prevent failures with no need for human intervention.
Modernizing legacy infrastructure and becoming future-proof
As the manufacturing landscape continues to evolve, organizations need to keep pace with technological changes. Although IT software and hardware solutions are continually updated, many OT systems are not. OT assets tend to have longer lifespans than IT assets, which means they may not possess the latest technology. They can also be proprietary, hard to update, and difficult to modify.
Edge computing provides an essential platform for modernizing OT hardware and software and adopting the latest technologies to improve flexibility, scalability, and reliability. This approach also simplifies matters for IT teams by providing a standardized platform that easily integrates into their IT infrastructure.
The benefits of leveraging edge computing to modernize critical infrastructure can already be seen today. One system integrator charged with modernizing a leading global specialty chemicals manufacturer's compute infrastructure across its product lines was able to consolidate nine server workloads running Rockwell Automation applications—including three FactoryTalk batch servers, two FactoryTalk HMI servers, a Historian server, a SQL server, a domain controller, and an engineering workstation—onto a single, fault-tolerant edge computing platform. The consolidation was a success, and the manufacturer has experienced no unplanned downtime since implementation.
Modernizing legacy infrastructure also improves enterprise cybersecurity by enabling IT and OT teams to align their security protocols and create a more robust, resilient, and secure infrastructure. With an edge computing platform, IT and OT teams have access to real-time monitoring and centralized control, enabling faster detection and mitigation of cyber threats.
Simplifying manageability and serviceability
A key benefit of IT/OT convergence is enhanced manageability and serviceability. With edge computing, manufacturers tie existing IT systems and technologies into the OT environment, which can all be managed remotely. Additionally, with virtualization, IT teams can easily consolidate workloads onto a single, fault tolerant edge platform, reducing IT footprint and costs.
IT teams can also leverage an edge computing platform to push and patch applications at the edge, manage applications remotely and securely, and deliver future improvements by scaling these solutions in other production environments. Purpose-built edge computing also makes it easier for local OT teams to manage compute infrastructure without additional IT expertise or resources, which often is not available on the shopfloor.
Remote monitoring and diagnostics make autonomous operations possible. IT monitoring tools running on an edge computing platform provide crucial visibility into the operational environment and generate insights that improve performance. Visibility is also improved across IT/OT functions as critical data is aggregated, organized, and shared across systems from the edge to the cloud while minimizing latency, security, and cost concerns.
Choosing the right edge computing provider
Moving towards IT/OT convergence is no easy task. Finding the right edge computing provider to support the effort is a crucial first step. Whether that’s a system integrator or a trusted technology partner, ensuring a smooth transition and receiving impeccable ongoing support services are key.
Choosing an edge computing platform provider that not only understands the importance of IT/OT convergence but also provides 24/7/365 support and services makes a huge difference. Because IT teams often pressed to do more with less, it is crucial to have an edge computing provider that offers comprehensive development and support for end-to-end, multi-vendor environments. These services enable organizations to supplement existing IT resources with customized solutions to address IT/OT convergence requirements.
Working with a true business partner gives IT teams the opportunity to offload platform support and health monitoring to experts in OT deployments and edge computing platforms, reducing the IT workload and making it easier to meet stringent uptime KPIs.
Organizations that have converged IT and OT report a wide range of benefits, including:
Massive reduction of IT infrastructure footprint. In one case, 12 servers were consolidated into one fault-tolerant edge computing platform.
Near elimination of unplanned downtime, data loss, and associated negative business impacts.
Edge computing deployment and thorough infrastructure modernization in just 45 days.
Increased capabilities and deployment of complex software as well as a 15-20% reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO).
Maintenance needs reduced by 50% (including issues, troubleshooting, and monitoring).
Simple, protected, autonomous edge computing
Organizations looking to streamline operations, bridge IT/OT barriers, manage and share data, and reduce cybersecurity threats are pursuing IT/OT convergence using edge computing platforms.
Edge computing ensures that organizations can realize the full benefits of their IT/OT convergence strategies. These enterprises need a comprehensive, user-friendly solution that is:
Simple
Easy to deploy, install, manage, and scale over time, with a zero-touch approach.
Protected
Robust physical design ensures reliable operation in field environments, with native redundancy to reduce operational and financial risk.
12 April 2023.
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1. Gartner, Building an Edge computing Strategy,