Issue 2

Industrial Analytics
Powered by the Internet
of Things
The next wave of business transformation

1
Welcome
3
Research from Gartner:
Industrial Analytics Revolutionizes
Big Data in the Digital Business
10
About Datawatch Corporation

Welcome
The Internet of Things (IoT) is ushering in a new wave of low cost sensor
devices and their associated data streams. Gartner has identified
industrial analytics as the next wave of business transformation for
those organizations that can effectively harness this information for more
meaningful and timely decisions. But traditional BI and analytic approaches
will not be sufficient in an era of high speed, high volume data streams.
Industrial analytics requires a combination of streaming data analytics and visual data discovery
that allows operators to be alerted when an important event occurs and to enrich this with the
business context to make better, faster decisions and take action. As most sensor information
and machine log files include time series data that is continuous and very granular, it needs
to be cached and analyzed in a very different manner than traditional BI which expects time
in days, weeks and months. And the format of the data is often multi-structured and requires
complex preparation in real-time before it can be visualized. You also need to enhance your
understanding by applying predictive analytics on the fly.
Datawatch is pleased to provide this important Gartner research on industrial analytics.
Datawatch customers have been at the forefront of this next wave by applying our next
generation visual data discovery solutions to a variety of industrial use cases. Datawatch has
been recognized by Gartner as a Cool Vendor for its unique in-memory architecture and ability
to visualize streaming data and join this with other sources including OT repositories, time series
databases, conventional relational and columnar databases, and multi-structured data.
We hope you enjoy this research report and encourage you to reach out to us to learn how you
can begin to transform your organization.

Featuring research from

Dan Potter
Vice President, Product Marketing
Datawatch Corporation

Research from Gartner:

Industrial Analytics Revolutionizes

Big Data in the Digital Business
CIOs of asset-intensive companies are
finding themselves at the leading edge
of industrial analytics, the next wave of
business transformation. Use this research
to surmount existing challenges of IT/OT
data integration and analysis by examining
opportunity, business needs and skills
availability.

Key Challenges
As the cost of sensors and
communications comes down, and
as storage capability and processing
speed increase (for example, Hadoop),
enormous troves of operational
technology (OT) data are being collected
and stored, but remain unused or
underused.
OT is markedly different from IT in
application, architectural characteristics
and need for different governance. Data
scientists versed in OT are consequently
rare.
Combining IT and OT holds
transformational possibilities in analytics
for asset-intensive industries, but
will require new approaches to data
integration and management, and an
evolution of infrastructure and skills for
data integration, management, and
analytics.

Recommendations
CIOs of asset-intensive companies:
Audit your data. Find underutilized OT
data (or dark data), and look for new

ways to expand use of low-cost sensors

and new data sources that can be
mapped to business opportunities.
Identify a scenario and develop a pilot
project that uses diverse sources of OT
data, but that interacts with the enterprise
system to deliver high-value outcomes.
Partner with line of business (LOB)
counterparts/leadership to understand
desired future-state business outcomes,
and develop analytics use cases to deliver
the necessary intelligence to support this
transformation.

Introduction
This document was revised on 27 August
2014. The document you are viewing is the
corrected version. For more information, see
the Corrections page on gartner.com.
The basis of competition for asset-intensive
companies is shifting from physical assets
to information assets derived from the
equipment. More specifically, the search for
competitive advantage is starting to focus
on companies ability to capture information
from a wide spectrum of sources, and
then visualize, analyze, propagate and
contextualize it in a way that will drive the
next wave of business transformation.
In asset-intensive industries (such as
energy, manufacturing, oil and gas, mining,
transportation, healthcare and utilities),
sensors embedded in equipment and
infrastructure are generating and collecting
terabytes of raw data, most of which is

never used in an analytical role. However,

this underutilized data, or dark data,
represents huge potential, in terms of both
asset performance management (APM) and
product/service quality management if
only it can be harnessed (see Note 1). The
process of capturing, organizing, combining
and applying specific and applicable OT
data with IT what Gartner calls industrial
analytics represents the next wave
of business transformation (see Note 2).
The successful CIOs in the asset-intensive
industries will recognize and deliver on this
value to their business.

Analysis

Look for Dark OT Data, Finding

New Ways to Expand Use of
Low-Cost Sensors and New Data
Sources That Can Be Mapped to
Business Opportunities
Todays asset-intensive companies are
replete with equipment and systems with
embedded sensors generating data.
Thousands of sensors and controllers
continually measure, report and record
temperatures, pressures, flows and
vibrations sometimes at subsecond
intervals and time stamp the data (often
referred to as time series data). Huge
volumes are collected and stored, but most
of it is never touched again, since it falls
outside the traditional confines of IT systems,
and is essentially dark data to the IT
department.

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was originally published as part of Gartners syndicated research service available to all entitled Gartner clients. 2014 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. The use of Gartner research in this publication
does not indicate Gartners endorsement of Datawatchs products and/or strategies. Reproduction or distribution of this publication in any form without Gartners prior written permission is forbidden. The information
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Much of what IT calls dark data comes from

systems known by engineers and operations
staff as operational technology, or OT. OT
typically involves systems and devices that
monitor and control plant functions and
equipment. OT takes on a number of forms.
Some OT monitors technical parameters
and ensures safe operation of complex
machines, including those in power plants,
on offshore drilling rigs, and on aircrafts,
reporting or even shutting down equipment
that is in danger of breakdown or failure.
Other OT includes event-driven software
applications or devices with embedded
software, or systems that manage and
control mission-critical production and
delivery processes. The sources are not even
necessarily in your own business; if you are
delivering equipment enabled with OT, then
dark data may come from your customers

for analysis. The types of data will vary as is

reflected in Figure 1.
Even though engineering and operations
staff view OT data as the currency of their
daily life, they still typically access only
for their own daily functional needs. For
example:
A single turbine compressor blade can
generate 500GB of data per day.
A typical wind farm may generate 150,000
data points per second.
A smart meter project can generate 500
million readings of data per day.
Weather analysis can involve petabytes
(quintillions of bytes) of data.

FIGURE 1
Industries Are Adopting Different Types of Big Data at Very Different Rates
Which types of big data does your organization currently analyze?
Manu. & Media/
Nat. Res. Comm. Svcs. Govt. Edu. Retail Banking Insur. Health. Trans.
Transactions

73%

62%

67%

67%

54%

93%

83%

81%

75%

79%

Log Data

44%

57%

58%

59%

54%

40%

66%

61%

33%

71%

Emails/
Documents

27%

43%

43%

41%

46%

27%

34%

39%

17%

29%

Social Media
Data

32%

52%

39%

26%

54%

73%

27%

13%

50%

Machine Data

37%

24%

29%

19%

23%

20%

27%

29%

42%

29%

Free-Form Text

17%

24%

28%

30%

31%

20%

34%

35%

67%

21%

Geospatial Data

27%

14%

19%

19%

38%

27%

27%

26%

8%

29%

Sensor Data

36%

29%

12%

30%

23%

7%

7%

29%

25%

29%

Images

19%

24%

17%

11%

38%

13%

5%

16%

25%

7%

Video

8%

29%

12%

7%

31%

13%

6%

8%

7%

Audio

10%

19%

8%

4%

8%

6%

Other

8%

14%

13%

15%

8%

7%

10%

16%

42%

14%

n=

59

21*

127

27*

13*

15*

41

31

12*

14*

Base: Invested or plan to invest in technology for big data

*Base < 30; results are directional
Multiple responses allowed

Source: Gartner (August 2014)

By their very nature, asset-intensive

organizations are collecting and storing
huge information assets every second of
every day. The volume, variety and velocity
of OT are so huge that calling it simply
big data seems somehow inadequate.
The potential benefits of being able to
harness and leverage these assets are
transformational. Some companies are
already beginning to make small strides. For
example:
A medical device manufacturer was able
to leverage data from device monitors to
nearly double availability of its equipment,
while reducing cost of maintenance by
20% to 30%.
An international petroleum company
avoided millions of dollars in downtime
and lost production by remotely
monitoring and analyzing data collected
from critical equipment at a location
halfway around the world.
A global producer of components
and solutions is able to monitor the
temperature of assets such as cold stores,
store freezers, and refrigerators in 4,500
supermarkets worldwide, analyzing
thermostats, evaporators, fans and
compressors to greatly reduce unplanned
failures, reducing expensive downtime
and third-party call outs.
A Canadian power company was able to
integrate IT and OT data from $20 billion
worth of assets in a smart grid, resulting
in significant savings, in terms of reduced
truck rolls, and a more cost-effective
replacement strategy for aging assets.
A railroad brake manufacturer was able
to attach sensors to brakes installed in
major railroad trains. Aggregating this
data and producing insight and reports
for the owners of the locomotives allowed
them to better train the engineers
and better manage the acceleration
and braking of the trains throughout

thousand-mile trips. This insight helped

train companies save as much as 1% in
fuel costs.

Identify a Scenario, and Develop

a Pilot Project That Uses OT but
Interacts With the Enterprise System
to Deliver High-Value Outcomes
For CIOs in asset-intensive environments,
essential first steps in defining any business
case for optimizing industrial assets are to
identify the data needed, and to ensure that
the right data is being collecting or can be
collected.

support what are usually highly insulated

localized processes.
The transformational opportunities of
integrating IT with OT are substantial, but
initial objectives should be to balance
effectiveness and efficiency. As with any
analytics initiative, the key will be to define
a business that ties investment to tangible,
high-value outcomes. A number of factors
come into play:
The cost of sensors is coming down,
making broader use cases more
economically viable.

IT and OT have evolved in different

environments, and are based on different
data types and information architectures.
They are sufficiently different in purpose
and nature as to pose formidable barriers
to making them compatible, let alone
combining and synchronizing data between
them:

Data security is a top-of-mind issue,

since sensors and controllers are often
embedded within critical infrastructure
and assets. Such use cases must
anticipate transient problems and
glitches; additionally, in todays connected
environment, deliberate, malicious
hacking is a very real threat.

IT has evolved essentially from the top

down, focusing primarily on the business
that is, the corporate operations
and systems required to manage
the business, mainly from a financial
perspective. IT also has a substantial
consumerism component, being
resident on millions of personal as well
as business computers. IT systems are
based on well-established standards that
can accommodate the integration of large
volumes of information across different
applications.

Devising and gaining agreement

on network technology and device
connectivity standards poses a major
challenge. While machine to machine
(M2M) connectivity has been around for
years, no single industry standard exists.

OT, on the other hand, grew from

the bottom up, with many different
proprietary systems designed to control
specific processes and equipment. OT
systems are (or were) usually based on
vendor-specific, proprietary technologies
operating in a real-time or near-real-time
environment. OT is commonly deployed
in harsh environments, and typically has
a low tolerance for failure and significant
requirements for recovery. OT has highly
focused governance models required to
4

Lately, the Internet of Things (IoT) has

become a central rallying point, and is
fueling efforts to develop more-inclusive
standards. Some proposed standards are
beginning to emerge. For example, the
Telecommunications Industry Association
(TIA), which represents a number of
manufacturers and suppliers of high-tech
communications networks, has issued an
M2M protocol standards series (TR-50 TIA
4940.020 and TR-50 TIA 4940.000) with the
declared intent of inspiring companies to
implement connectivity to the things they
manufacture. In manufacturing industries,
the renewed interest in more generic
standards like OPC Unified Architecture
(UA) may assuage IT/OT integration and
information access concerns. (OPC UA is

used for integration with OT data sources

such as programmable logic controllers
[PLCs], distribution control system [DCS]/
supervisory control and data acquisition
[SCADA], and other production equipment/
machinery.)

Partner With LOB Counterparts/

Leadership to Understand Desired
Future-State Business Outcomes,
and Develop Analytics Use
Cases to Deliver the Necessary
Intelligence to Support This
Transformation
To get business buy-in for industrial analytics
initiatives, CIOs will need to understand
their internal customers and be able to
identify what data (dark or otherwise) will be
needed to support the desired outcomes.
Figure 2 provides a high-level view of how
and where the best opportunities lie for IT/
OT integration and convergence.
Most likely, an enterprise is already
collecting and storing some OT data. OT
data may even be contributing to systems
or applications that monitor and possibly
even detect early warning signals that
machines or systems are degrading or
in danger of breakdown. While this is
valuable information that can reduce risk
of unplanned downtime and potentially
save the enterprise money, if and when
organizations can improve their analytics
maturity, IT and OT information can be
fully harnessed, and the potential is much
greater. Additionally, we see a rise in
external monitoring provided by equipment
makers that, within their environments,
leverage customer OT data to carry out
similar objectives, but may extend it to R&D
of their own products and enhancing their
supply chain and customer service.

Use Case Maturity

Industrial analytics maturity is defined
in terms of four states across the eight
dimensions. Levels are:

1 Monitor

charging airlines for the amount of thrust

used.

2 Diagnose and control

Companies like Zipcar, by equipping cars
with sensors, can eliminate the rental car
center. They can monitor rental car usage
and thereby rent for short periods of time
at higher rates.

3 Manage
4 Optimize
Each level builds on the previous.

Level 2
Level 1
In Level 1, companies can monitor and
report on asset behavior and even track
interactions between them. They can
track location and monitor use, including
wear and tear. Monitoring not only
improves insight into conditions for better
maintenance but also can lead to new
business models. For example:
Jet engine manufacturers are creating
new business models by retaining
ownership of their products while

At Level 2, organizations can not only monitor

behavior but also diagnose issues, and, in
some cases, even respond. For example:
Monitoring patients and alerting the
appropriate caregiver in time can optimize
patient outcomes and minimize cost.
Monitoring and controlling equipment
enables the throttling back or shutting
down of an expensive piece of equipment
when temperatures or pressures exceed
certain thresholds that could lead to
downtime.

FIGURE 2
IT/OT Opportunities

Identify an Anchor Point for IT/OT Collaboration

IT
ERP

OT
Costs

CRM
Demand
Management
Financial
Planning
Network
Optimization

State

Context
Orders

Constraints

Visualization
Prediction

Smart Machines
Location

Condition

Monitoring
Specs.

Control Systems

Events

Location
Systems
Environmental
Sensors

Bar Codes/RFID

Big Data Means Integration Between IT and OT

Level 3
The Level 3 state enables organizations
to manage the performance of asset and
processes. This includes examples such as:
Danfoss which supplies products
and technologies for cooling food,
heating and air conditioning buildings,
controlling electric motors and powering
mobile machinery was able to create
predictive and preventative maintenance
strategies that help companies shift from
unplanned maintenance to predictive
maintenance, resulting in 70% fewer
alarms.
Sensors and data links used in healthcare
can monitor a patients behavior and
symptoms in real time and at relatively
low cost, allowing physicians to better
diagnose disease and to prescribe
tailored treatment regimens.
A manufacturer of equipment that
manages skids that automate the custody
transfer of hydrocarbons in the petroleum
value chain for multiple industries (such
as oil production, trucks and tankers)
built a cloud-based remote monitoring
system. Data collected from the flow
meters that monitor temperature in the
skids is sent to the cloud. The data is, in
turn, provided to customers as a service
to help drive process improvements, and
to provide the basis for predictive and
preventative maintenance programs,
as well as financial processes (accurate
billing) improvement. This avoided system
degradation, which can lead to quality
and cost issues where a 1% error each
day can add more than $1 billion of lost
revenue per year.
Level 4
Level 4 is about optimizing decisions,
processes and systems. This impacts
logistics for:

Source: Gartner (August 2014)

 Companies (such as UPS or other delivery

companies, airlines and shipping firms)
that are able to use industrial analytics
by monitoring weather conditions, traffic
patterns and vehicle locations to optimize
constant routes while reducing wear
and tear, gas consumption and while
improving safety and on-time delivery
given service levels.

Data Maturity

Facilities like hospitals that need to

optimize use of staff, equipment,
consumables, beds, rooms and so on
while keeping wait times to a minimum.

Industrial analytics introduces sensors as

new data sources. The first question for the
CIO is to determine if you have access to
monitor the assets you want to monitor. If
not, what will it cost to install the necessary
monitoring equipment? Bear in mind that
with the replacement cycle of OT systems
being much longer than for IT, planning
now will enable aligned investments in the

Field service and repair of assets across

a system that is prioritized and optimized
based on likelihood to fail versus impact
calculations.
FIGURE 3
Gartner Information Capabilities Framework

Within the context of industrial analytics,

the typical enterprise data maturity applies.
It begins with the analysis of historical
data, which, in most cases, will be nicely
structured and often siloed data. From there,
organizations try to integrate and leverage
multistructured, real-time data, as well as
external data.

future. Integration of OT data from sensors

must be a coordinated and integrated part
of an enterprise information management
capabilities framework (see Figure 3).

Sensor Integration
Sensor integration will range from tightly
coupled integration with proprietary
standards at Level 1 up to Internet-connected
sensors to cross-sensor integration, to
sensors with distributed processing and selflearning and healing capabilities at Level 4.
Key to this process will be the introduction
and wide adoption of common standards
similar to those that enabled the proliferation
of the Internet of people. Currently, a few
standards are beginning to emerge, such
as message queue telemetry transport
(MQTT), data distribution service (DDS) and
Common Industrial Protocol supporting
different layers of the stack. The newly
formed Industrial Internet Consortium is
another standards body attempted to create
common standards. Integrating the OT
data from sensors must be a coordinated
and integrated part of the information
management capabilities framework plan
and road map.

Analytics
From an analytics perspective, as shown in
Figure 4, maturity will involve expanding from
the purely descriptive (What happened?) to
diagnostic (Why did it happen?) to predictive
(What will happen?) to prescriptive (What
should be done about it?):
Descriptive (Level 1) would leverage
descriptive analytics: Which parts/
equipment have failed? Which parts
failed over time by equipment and
manufacturer?
Diagnostic (Level 2) would leverage
diagnostic analytics: Which parts/
suppliers/factories are the primary
causes of failures? Are there correlations
between part failures?
Source: Gartner (August 2014)

Predictive (Level 3) would help

organizations tie predictions to decisions
using rules, some content analytics to
measure which parts or equipment are
likely to fail either based on actual
conditions or based on patterns or
leading indicators.
Prescriptive (Level 4) makes it possible to
leverage the continuum of capabilities,
and to include external data sources
such as energy data or weather patterns
to create prescriptive capabilities.
Organizations can do this to determine
the optimal production schedule/product
mix or preventive maintenance schedule
across assets to optimize asset life and
profit, and to minimize downtime while
meeting customer demand (business
outcome).

Context-Based Decisions
The value of leveraging OT data is less in
the technology per se, but in how the data is
used to automate and improve operational
impacts on business outcomes. Critical to this
context is the ability to define and maintain
models of multiple, related information
sources, and to maintain persistent, functional
and operational models (relationships)
between the data over an extended hierarchy
of time scales and business priorities that
extend significantly beyond the operations
environment, portraying OT data alongside
enterprise data.
A chemicals company combined historical
data and unit metrics on asset performance,
cost, yield and cycle times by shift, day
and month. It uses these models against

FIGURE 4
Analytics Capabilities
Analytics

Human Input

Descriptive

What happened?

Diagnostic

Why did it happen?

Data

Decision Action

Predictive

What will happen?

Decision Support

Prescriptive

What should I do?

Sample Questions/Use Cases:

What is the optimal preventive

maintenance schedule across
assets to optimize asset life and
profit, and to minimize
downtime?
How should equipment be
automatically controlled
to optimize?

Decision Automation

Technologies/Approaches:

Event processing
Sensor integration
and other data
Optimization (e.g., linear
programming, mixed integer
programming)
Decision analysis,
influence diagrams

Game theory
Predictive (or
descriptive, or
diagnostic) analytics,
plus rules
Control systems
Cognitive systems

near-real-time data from its OT layer (DCS/

SCADA) with ERP-based data to do not only
activity-based costing, but also simulations
to predict the impacts that changes in energy
and material (feedstock) costs will have
on asset performance and total margin. In
Year 1, this project returned over $1 million
in savings and a 2% reduction in energy
feedstocks and electricity costs. In many
instances, these models will start small, but
will expand over time to leverage internal
and external data sources, and to provide
a closed loop that links factory and product
data with business performance to improve
operations.
As the new networks link data from
products, company assets or the operating
environment, they will generate better
information and analysis. This could
significantly enhance decision making, be
those decisions at a strategic level (such as
where to drill an oil field) or a tactical level
(such as a patient treatment plan). They
range from batch, offline decision support to
real time both human augmented, in the
case of strategic and tactical decisions, and
increasing for automated and real time for
operational decisions (like routing a truck,
auto scheduling and assigning repairs or
shutting off a valve before failure). In the pulp
and paper industry, one company was able
to raise production 5% by using data from
embedded temperature sensors to adjust
a kiln flames shape and intensity. Reducing
temperature variance to near zero improved
product quality and eliminated the need
for frequent operator intervention to adjust
temperature (see Table 1).

Asset Management Level: Predictive Forecasting, Financial Optimized

Source: Gartner (August 2014)

Table 1. Industrial Analytics Maturity Find and Develop the Skills for IT/OT Integration
Level 1
Monitor

Level 2
Diagnose and Control

Level 3
Manage

Level 4
Optimize

Decisions

Batch offline decision

support

Pockets of fact-based
decisions, rule-based,
predictive

Operationalized predictive
models in applications,
pervasive fact-based
decision making

Human-augmented,
collaborative; real-time
embedded, automated,
decision optimized

IT/OT Convergence

Identify how
convergence (OT looks
like IT) is happening in
your business

Consensus that
convergence means a
change in managing OT

Alignment of how you

manage OT with how you
manage IT

Integration of IT and OT
systems and infrastructure,
resources and management

Infrastructure
Deployments

On-premises

Noncritical tactical cloud

Hybrid but cloud tactical;

SQL, NoSQL, New SQL
piloting

Some mission-critical cloud;

SQL, NoSQL, New SQL tactical
deployment

Skills

Report writing, SQL

Report writing, SQL,

OLAP, data modeling,
visualization and analysis

R, SAS, SPSS, content

analytics

Data science (machine

learning, business data
management, simulation,
optimization, operationalizing)
on multistructured data

OLAP = online analytical processing; SPSS = Statistical Package for the Social Sciences
Source: Gartner (August 2014)

IT/OT integration will be critical at all

stages of the maturation process from
awareness and assessment, to agreement
on changes that need to happen in
both areas, to alignment of strategy and
resources, to integration of resources,
infrastructure and management. Identifying
the anchor point or use case for IT/OT
collaboration is a good first step.
An important part of IT/OT integration will
involve the evolution of infrastructure from
solely on-premises to likely some hybrid
of cloud and on-premises. A number of
technologies will be required, including
analytics, big data technologies, BPM,
support for streaming data, security, sensors
and so on.

Overarching all of these considerations,

however, will be the need for a maturity
of skills from report-centric capabilities
to advanced analytics, big data, and data
science skill sets, including:
Data management How do I build
operational models in processes?
Analytics modeling Which algorithms,
modeling or machine learning techniques
should be used? How are the results
interpreted? What are the latest
techniques to run them in parallel, or to
crowdsource them?
Domain expertise What are specific
algorithms and workflow that are relevant
to the business processes in my industry?

What is possible in my industry and

business? How can I have the maximum
impact?
To avoid the skills gap, organizations can
buy packaged applications (such as those
offered by C3global, Clockwork, Mtel and
others) targeted at specific use cases.
Increasingly, these applications will package
industry, aggregate data or act as industry
analytics service providers. GE and SKF are
examples of equipment vendors providing
this type of offering.
Another option is to develop the skills
internally. In this case, companies can
harvest them from OT or the line of business.
Finally, organizations can use crowdsourcing
services that bring together data scientists

usually for prize money, such as Kaggle,

topcoder or Meridium asset answers.
Having the skills internally is not the only
answer. The best course of action can be to
buy or outsource.

Recommendations:
Consider the build solution path if you
already have analytics skills in-house,
if the required analytics are a critical
differentiator, or you require a high level
of agility and granularity of control.
Consider the buy solution path when
packaged applications are available, and
the time to solution is more important
than any potential differentiation.
Consider the outsource solution path if
you lack the in-house skills to build your
own solution, and packaged applications
dont meet your needs or require
significant customization to do so.

Note 1. Dark Data

Gartner defines dark data as the information assets that organizations collect, process
and store during regular business activities, but generally fail to use for other purposes (for
example, analytics, business relationships and direct monetizing). Similar to dark matter in
physics, dark data often comprises most organizations universe of information assets. Thus,
organizations often retain dark data for compliance purposes only. Storing and securing data
typically incurs more expense (and sometimes greater risk) than value.
Note 2. Operational Technology
Operational technology (OT) is the technology used in the running of an enterprise that senses
or controls physical assets.
OT is used exclusively in enterprise contexts. The term originated in industrial situations where
there was investment in plant and equipment control systems. We now use OT to refer to any
technology in businesses that is used in the running of the operation, with a few exceptions.
Exceptions include back-end IT systems used for processing and storing of information and
other general-purpose hardware and software.
Examples of OT include a wide range of items such as ATMs in banks, medical equipment,
telecommunications infrastructure switching and routing equipment, building management
systems, navigation systems, and many more. OT does not apply to technology used by
consumers.
OT excludes IT systems, but the data produced by OT is accessed and used by IT systems for
analytics, scheduling, business planning and other purposes. The integration of OT with IT
systems is a major issue for enterprises due to the value that can be realized.
OT typically uses dedicated hardware with embedded software, rather than general-purpose
PCs and servers, but this is not always the case. Some hardware for example, computer
networks may be shared between OT and IT systems. OT is, however, normally designed for
a specific operational purpose, and is not designed for extensibility beyond that purpose.
OT equipment will normally be connected. In these cases, OT becomes a part of the IoT. There
are examples of nonconnected OT, such as handheld test equipment. OT also includes some
nonelectronic devices and equipment, such as pressure relief valves. There is, however, a longterm trend toward total connectivity. When this happens, OT will become a subset of IoT.
Gartner Research G00264728, Kristian Steenstrup Rita L. Sallam Simon F Jacobson Leif Eriksen, 19 August 2014

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