Modern organizations are caught between two worlds. There is the traditional physical world, which is made up of machines, electromechanical devices, manufacturing systems, and other industrial machinery. Then there's the more recent digital world, which makes use of servers, storage, networking, and other devices to run applications and process data. These two worlds have traditionally occupied distinct domains, shared little (if any) meaningful data or control, and relied on oversight from business personnel with vastly different skill sets.

Today, the IT and OT worlds are merging. Technological advancements such as the internet of things (IoT) and big data analytics are allowing the digital information world to see, understand, and influence the physical operational world. When properly implemented, IT/OT convergence can combine business processes, insights, and controls into a unified environment.

Advantages of integrating OT and IT

This integration provides the OT with a more efficient, scalable, managed, and secure infrastructure upon which numerous applications are layered, including predictive maintenance and remote asset monitoring and management. On the IT side, benefits include secure real-time communication with the enterprise's assets while maintaining the necessary efficiency for creating, scaling, maintaining, and securing the infrastructure.
As a result, operational performance improves, profit margins are protected, customers are retained, and new business models are developed. The key to business transformation is open, well-defined IoT architectures and their specific properties. They unlock the potential of IoT ecosystems and turn any company into a smart company.

While the concept of iPaaS (integration Platform as a Service) typically entails connecting applications within the IT domain, Everyware Cloud acts as a bridge between OT field devices and enterprise applications in the IT domain. Furthermore, it meets the requirements of the OT domain as well as the needs of the enterprise IT infrastructure, allowing secure and remote device application management and allowing IT applications to interact with these elements.

This integration enables business digital transformation by connecting data generated by OT devices that can be sent to IT applications and enterprise analytics located in the IT domain or data center that can have real-time access to those valuable data. An IoT architecture should therefore enable access to data from devices across applications and build relationships between data sources in order to take different actions based on data coming from different areas to enable seamless integration between OT and IT.