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Everyone is talking about OT and IT growing together, converging. Some are even predicting a fusion. The fact is that the new market of open, Linux-based platforms in industrial automation means that hardly a stone is being left unturned. This time, however, it is probably not IT that is driving innovation, but OT, which is embracing the most important advances in IT. OIT, Operational Information Technology, sums up this development quite well.

I have yet to find out who coined the term OT. However, it is not just my suspicion that it probably came from the IT sector, perhaps to exclude the programming of field devices and their management as non-IT. The machine-oriented programming required there, the bits and bytes to control pumps, motors, robot arms and conveyor belts in µ-second cycles, that was something other than computer science. There is no longer much sign of this arrogance.

Technological leap in IT – overtaking through OT

In fact, IT has undergone unprecedented development in recent decades, which OT has long been unaffected by. The relocation of large parts of technology to the cloud; the penetration of all areas of IT with AI; the availability of no-code and low-code for programming some applications even without knowledge of high-level languages. The icing on the cake is the disclosure of technological centerpieces such as Kubernetes in the mid-teens – none of this has much in common with the IT of 1990. Today, the most important IT architectures are microservice-based.

But during this time, OT specialists have ensured that – despite the rapidly growing complexity of industrial products and their production, and with the tsunami of ever smaller sensors, actuators, cameras and other components through to Internet connectivity – this manufacturing industry in German-speaking countries has remained the world champion. While the IT systems in all industrial processes became more and more of a block whose costs were disproportionate to its benefits.

The architecture and programming of the IT systems, which have now grown into true giants, have remained at the level of technology of the 1990s. Inflexible, hard to customize. And the industry is still struggling with how the individual application areas can work together better across the boundaries of these systems.

Operational information technology is moving towards IT via the bridge of real-time Linux and open standards.

Now the wall between IT and OT is coming down. Between 2010 and 2015, the real-time capability of Linux pushed the door wide open for OT. Now they are pouring through this door in droves. It turns out that although the door is open to both sides, the flows are mainly coming from OT.

What is now possible is the use of data from products, including machines, devices and production facilities. For many years, IT complained that no data was being made available from the proprietary and monolithic OT systems, meaning that although terabytes of data were being generated every day, it was lying unused on the shop floor and getting stuck in the machines. But it is not IT that is now seizing the opportunity.

Colorful little plants from the concrete floor of the factory building

The first step in the fall of the wall between OT and IT was open container technology with Docker and Kubernetes on real-time Linux. And by the end of the decade, new plants were already beginning to sprout from the concrete floors of factory halls: Microservice-based platforms, which turned the previously accepted meaning of the term platform in IT from its head to its feet.

Here, openness is no longer a buzzword used to lure customers onto a proprietary IT platform from which they are not supposed to come off. Openness is a reality here. Everyone can use these platforms side by side for different purposes, and some manufacturers, although competitors at the same time, work so closely together that their apps can run on different platforms. And so can those of the machine manufacturers.

Within just a few years, there are 13 platforms for industrial automation – in the Smart Automation market overview alone – and two more will be added shortly. But the platforms are just the foundation stone. It is the beginning of a new, digital phase of industrial automation. This is because the platforms all have an architecture that can be used to implement all conceivable functionalities, not just control and optimize production. These first platforms are like the first iPhone in 2007, and everyone knows what came out of this initial idea on smartphones. You can guess what is now even more possible in industry and on the basis of industrial products.

There are already numerous special platforms from many, many start-ups, each focusing on a specific use case or a particular function. Designing user interfaces, visualizing analyses, using digital twins, managing cybersecurity and much more. At the same time, a large number of small development teams – at machine manufacturers and in the garage – are working on apps that can run on the automation platforms.

These platforms will presumably form the basis on which the Internet of Things will soon take shape on a massive scale. Products of all kinds can be equipped with digital services with which their manufacturers can also realize digital value creation. The vision of Industry 4.0 is becoming a reality.

Not hyperscalers and IT – the automation experts set the pace

It is not the IT hyperscalers from Amazon to Google to Microsoft, who have been seeking access to this market at industrial trade fairs for ten years, who have built the platforms. Nor did the providers of standard IT, from Dassault Systèmes and PTC to SAP and Siemens, or the MES providers. No, it was OT specialists, and only automation specialists currently dominate the market overview. These are currently the following, to which Beckhoff with TwinCAT and KEB with NOA will be added:

One of three comparison tables in the new Smart Automation 2021/1 market overview. In addition to this one on interoperability, there is also one on application areas and one on target markets in the platform comparison.

Bosch Rexroth with ctrlX AUTOMATION, FLECS Technologies with FLECS, German Edge Cloud with ONCITE DPS, Hilscher Gesellschaft für Systemautomation with netFIELD, KEBA AG with Kemro X, Lenze with Lenze NUPANO, Phoenix Contact with PLCnext Technology, SALZ Automation with SALZ Controller, TTTech Digital Solutions with Ubique, TTTech Industrial Automation AG with Nerve, WAGO with WAGO OS and WAGO ctrlX OS, and Weidmüller with u-OS and easyConnect.

What is currently growing here is hardly being noticed by the public. De-industrialization is painted on the wall, the lack of innovative strength of the domestic industry is lamented. Yet it is this core of industry that ensured the strength of the industrial location back in the 1970s with the first phase of programmed automation using programmable logic controllers. The platforms all come from Germany and Austria.

Nothing comparable is known from China or the USA. Instead, Alibaba Cloud is partnering with Phoenix Contact for PLCnext. If we had even a few politicians with an understanding of industry and its technologies, such as those who hold the highest offices in China, they would support this development with all their might and campaign on this issue in the elections. Unfortunately, we don’t have them.

The opportunity for the industrial location and its SMEs

What is growing here has what it takes to drive a new upswing in the industry, which is also linked to sustainability and the fight against the waste of resources. Reducing energy use, managing the safe and affordable production of sustainable products and almost unlimited possibilities for the secure use of data from machines and systems – these will be the successes if industry exploits the potential of the new offerings.

Incidentally, this is particularly true for those companies that form the strong backbone of our industry, the small and medium-sized enterprises, the SMEs. Four years ago, I took the trouble to find out how this industry is structured from the figures in the statistical yearbook. (Article on my homepage) The result was striking. The figures are unlikely to have changed much since then.

My article from 2021 has lost none of its topicality. (Source: The importance of SMEs at a glance, Sendler, 07/21)

96% of the 46,900 companies in Germany’s manufacturing industry have fewer than 500 employees, 90% have fewer than 250 and as many as 50% have fewer than 50 employees. The large corporations with more than 1,000 employees make up just one percent of these companies. But attention is focused almost exclusively on this one percent. When people talk about savings at Volkswagen, they are talking about tens of thousands of employees on whom and their families entire regions depend.

But whether our industrial location as a whole survives and can maintain its lead for a while longer will be decided by companies like the platform providers and the vast majority of their customers.

The great thing is that because the providers and their OT and IT specialists are down-to-earth themselves and know what the factory floor needs, they have designed their platforms in such a way that they are affordable for every entrepreneur and enable every company, even the smallest, to significantly increase its added value.

I received a lot of encouragement for my idea and my wish at the turn of the year that 2025 would be the year of open automation platforms. The liveliness of the market overview shows that this year is off to a good start. Whether it will be the year of the breakthrough depends on the industry.