Tuesday, April 7, 2020

The Merging of IT and OT

It starts with a basic definition. Everyone in our industry was born and raised to manage information technology. So as a category, that's the scope of what we typically pay attention to.

The other side of the customers’ world, however, is that what I refer to as OT or operational technologies, and that gets into the category of equipment and systems that are used to do labor. But it's also associated with the systems of a building and the machinery on a factory floor or the pump drilling into the ground. The key is that the operational technology is, in many cases, older than a lot of the information technology companies use and those systems in place need to be retrofitted for internet connectivity. What's changed is that when all of that equipment is connected to the internet it will run on an operating system, use a processor, have a hard drive and connect to the network for programming, control and automation purposes as well as for information gathering and analytical purposes.

CompTIA: How should a technology professional be looking at this topic?

RM: I think the first part of the conversation is that we have a blind spot to the world of operational technologies. But it actually looks like a missed opportunity, right? Especially if I'm a managed service provider and my job is to monitor, manage and report on anything that attaches to the network. Well, it's no longer just the servers and the laptops and somebody's smartphone. As we move into more of the modern definition of IoT, all of the things in this world that have a processor, internet connection, and a sensor to capture and track local information—those things all become opportunities.

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