What is the influence of IT on System Administration/ Diagnostics Approaches in Automation/ Operations  Systems?

The continued transformation of the automation/ operation systems under the significant influence of IT continues 14 to 15 years after the influence started to be felt during the “year 2000” panic and awareness. To me the most significant impact of this period was that corporate IT become aware during the software audits of the amount of desktop/ and servers running on the plants. From this time I have sat in many meeting where leading company IT engineers have discussed how they can bring more management and therefore sustainability to these systems.

The pressures on these trends / discussion continue and for good reason:

·         Security and threat of cyber security attacks down in plants is now not a dream but a reality

·         The continue stream line of IT and driving the IT cost down through outsourcing.

·         Also the never ending annual, and sub annual upgrading of OS especially now that most automation/operations systems run on Microsoft Operating systems, there is a treadmill of upgrades, due to security and technology evolution.

These are to name a few, and this is so different to 80s and 90s (when many of the current automation systems where originally developed), where the OS was isolated from these outside effects.

But the above pressures will not go away, no matter how much automation engineers “dig their heads in the sand”, because the reality of: