Industrial automation systems have fully adopted standard networking technologies and rely on them for the bulk of their communications. These networks must have the scale, flexibility, performance, and resiliency needed for these critical systems. This connectivity is the foundation for the industrial IoT and Industry 4.0 evolution – connecting sensors, actuators, and control systems to the machine-learning, digitization innovations in the cloud. IT/OT convergence in networking and security technology is not just established but critical to a wave of optimizations and improvements in the ecosystem. Oddly, the network management and tools are still far from converged. Operational Technology (OT) personnel do not have the same access to, and benefit of the network and security management tools used by IT. Yet they still need to rely on the network to operate the production
environment, often without tools that tell them how the network is performing and the ability to maintain that network. If a link fails or a device connects improperly, it takes a sleuth to identify and resolve the problem. Key challenges facing OT personnel include:

• Lack of visibility into network status and events that impact production
• Difficulty of applying consistent network configurations
• No effective means to update network infrastructure after initial deployment

Download the brochure to learn more about how Cisco DNA Center improves industrial operations by:

• Increasing overall equipment effectiveness and uptime
• Lowering operational costs
• Simplifying network management for IT and OT
• Enhancing security
• Helping ensure network performance
• Transforms network operations