The thought visited that some time has elapsed since I have heard anything from the Open Process Automation people (OPAF). Then this news of the successful conclusion of a digital infrastructure orchestration pilot project within the scope of the project. A nice step forward on the journey.
CPLANE.ai and ExxonMobil have published the results and findings of their digital infrastructure orchestration pilot. As IT/OT Convergence and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) adoption accelerates, new system management challenges must be addressed. This pilot demonstrated how orchestration can simplify the management of these new, multi-vendor systems while improving security and reliability. The whitepaper describing the methods and results of the pilot can be downloaded HERE.
Key findings from the pilot include:
1. Multi-vendor, open process automation can be integrated into a wholistic system using system orchestration technology.
2. Open standards, such as the Open Process Automation Standard, make inter-operability
orders of magnitude easier to manage and more reliable to implement.
3. An integrated hybrid-architecture of IT/OT digital assets can be managed in one cohesive
framework with limited or no IT expertise.
4. System orchestration is critical for accelerating innovation and adoption of converged IT/OT systems, particularly in an open, multi-vendor and interoperable control system.
Don Bartusiak, Chief Engineer for Process Control at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering said, “CPLANE.ai exceeded our expectations on what is possible in demonstrating the management of a converged IT/OT industrial control system. System orchestration is growing in visibility and importance within the Open Process Automation Forum (OPAF) and many of the findings of this pilot will help us shape the evolution of our standards.”
Digital infrastructure orchestration automates the provisioning, monitoring, failure-recovery, and evolution of OPA systems while maintaining continuous operations and network-based cybersecurity. Steve Bitar, an automation leader at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering, said “this was an ambitious project from the beginning. And the results have really given us a vision for how complex open industrial control systems can be managed and automated.”
CPLANE.ai is now conducting demonstrations of its Digital Infrastructure Test Bed with partners and members of OPAF. Going forward, CPLANE.ai will be applying the learnings from this pilot project to other OPAF related test beds and pilots globally.
CPLANE.ai automates the orchestration of distributed edge computing across a diverse landscape of hardware and software components. CPLANE.ai removes the complexity of provisioning, managing, securing, and evolving distributed systems. CPLANE.ai’s intelligent software platform automates the coordination and configuration of policies and procedures across multiple layers of distributed cloud infrastructure.
