Once industrial organizations see the benefits that can come from aligning OT and IT, they need an actual solution to turn that excellent idea into reality. What features are necessary to deliver a solid OT-IT platform? Because OT-IT alignment requires the connection of many devices and systems to collect and share the vast amount of high-quality data across an industrial enterprise, such a platform must be extraordinarily flexible and scalable, and equally capable in dealing with OT and IT technologies.

Required Feature: Flexibility

Unlike most SCADA solutions, the ideal OT-IT platform must exhibit extreme agility and flexibility — no proprietary solutions, no locked data, and no unnecessary frustrations. The ideal OT-IT platform must be able to adapt quickly to a wide range of industries and applications without hindering current enterprise infrastructures. Furthermore, it should be capable of making changes without interrupting current processes and workflow. Ready, set, connect, and data is available with just one click.

Required Feature: Scalability

Scalability is an incredibly important feature of the ideal OT-IT platform. As more systems and devices go live, the platform must be able to quickly accommodate the influx of data points, giving organizations the ability to share and analyze massive amounts of data in a short amount of time. The OT-IT platform should also scale without any restrictions.

Taking a page out of the IT playbook, the OT-IT platform should offer unlimited licensing, allowing an unlimited number of connections, tags, and user clients. The unlimited licensing allows for incredible scalability and results in significant cost savings.

Required Feature: Interoperability

The ideal OT-IT platform should bring interoperability between OT and IT by communicating with most if not all industrial and enterprise systems and devices. The platform should combine IT standards such as SQL, Python, and Java with OT standards such as OPC-UA and Mod-bus. By having a platform that can bridge the worlds of OT and IT, data can be shared across their whole entire organization easily. The ideal platform can truly empower organizations to make better decisions more often by leveraging SQL and Java to collect data from PLCs, RTUs, and HMI/SCADA systems.

The Optimal Solution: Ignition

Only one platform contains all of the features necessary for OT-IT alignment: Ignition by Inductive Automation. Unlike many other solutions out there, Ignition began as a web-based, database centric, fully cross-platform solution.

From the beginning, Ignition was made to integrate OT and IT; in fact, the company that developed Ignition has always cross pollinated OT and IT in its products. In 2003, Inductive Automation developed Factory-SQL, which is a predecessor of the Ignition platform. Factory-SQL was designed to move data between PLCs and SQL databases. It served as a “Swiss Army knife” for control system integrator. Since the release of the first version of Ignition in 2010, the software has continued in that direction, offering a solid and secure industrial development platform for today’s data- intensive industrial applications.

Ignition includes features that make it singularly effective as a universal industrial application platform for HMI, SCADA, IIoT, and MES. It has an unlimited licensing model, which allows
unlimited tags, clients, and connections. Unlimited licensing allows solutions to grow along with an organization without restrictions and additional costs.

Ignition offers cross-platform compatibility, and you can Web -launch it on desktop PCs or mobile devices. It features IT-standard technologies and scalable server-client architecture.

The platform is also modular, which means you configure Ignition’s capabilities by adding modules to it. By adding the MQTT protocol to the inherent capabilities of the Ignition platform, you can decouple intelligent devices from applications in order to make data available to the entire enterprise.

Ignition truly delivers on the promise of OT-IT interoperability. With its ability to move data between OT and IT systems, Ignition integrates easily with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platforms, Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS), Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics Systems, Document Management Systems (DMS), Video Surveillance
Operations Managers (VSOM), and leverages machine learning. With data being available at all levels, organizational performance is seriously enhanced.

Interoperability is made possible by leveraging SQL databases used in enterprise systems. Ignition’s built-in Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) drivers allow it to use many of the popular SQL database platforms such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and Open Database Connectivity, just to name a few. Furthermore, Ignition gives you control over how data is shared and accessed to ensure security, data integrity, and improved productivity.

While the concept of OT-IT convergence may seem like a new idea, Ignition has already set the stage for OT-IT alignment; it is the solution that can bridge the gap between the enterprise level and the plant floor. It fills the fundamental need for today’s manufacturers and industrial  organizations, which is to access more data in order to make better decisions, faster.