ID: I202602091719
Status: idea
Tags: IT vs OT
Operational Technology
OT is most commonly used to monitor and control production in factory settings. Unlike IT which primarily deals with the internet, OT plays an important role in dealing with the physical world. Because of this, one of OTās primary areas of concern is downtime.Ā
Downtime refers to the time when production is halted, whether planned or unplanned. Unplanned downtime often proves to be very expensive for businesses to deal with, so OTās main concern is being able toĀ prevent downtime āWhat is MTBF? Understanding Mean Time Between Failuresā)Ā as much as possible.
One way OT can help to prevent unplanned downtime is through the implementation ofĀ SCADA āWhat is a SCADA System and How Does It Work?ā)Ā (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), which is a type of industrial control system (ICS). SCADA software helps to controlĀ PLCs āWhat is a PLC? How does it Work?ā)Ā (programmable logic controllers), which are largely responsible for monitoring and controlling factory machines and production, and can help considerably with preventing downtime by automatically shutting off the factory machines or sounding an alarm in the case of a system malfunction.
But in recent years the line between Information Technology and Operational Technology is slowly blurring. This is called IT - OT convergence.