Bridging IT and OT: Closing the skill Gap w/ The IT/OT Insider | EP10 - The Connected Factory podcast

Why do so many IT/OT projects stall right where networks meet machines? In this episode of The Connected Factory Podcast, David Ariens, author and founder of The IT/OT Insider, joins hosts Alexander and Jeremy to reveal what truly brings IT and OT together. They explore how open learning, converged infrastructure, and straight-talk collaboration turn lofty digital goals into shop-floor results.

Topics Covered:

• David’s journey from mathematics to plant digitalisation and why cross-discipline thinking matters
• The education gap between IT and OT- and how to bridge it without paywalls
• Infrastructure convergence: unifying networks, data, and tooling for faster value
• Cybersecurity as a shared mission, not a hand-off
• Building a common language and trust across departments
• Growing a supportive community through IT/OT Insider
• Why authenticity and visible leadership speed adoption
• A practical playbook for launching IT/OT convergence projects

Key Takeaways

• Shared Language Comes First
  IT and OT teams lose hours talking past each other; a common vocabulary is the quickest way to unlock joint problem-solving.
• Open Knowledge Beats Gated White-Papers
  Engineers trust transparent, reuse-friendly content—not email-gated PDFs full of marketing fluff.
• Shift Focus from Infrastructure to Data Convergence
  Firewalls and patching are largely solved; the real bottleneck now is freeing data from siloed historians and licence walls.
• Match Strategy to Your Starting Point
  Legacy “first-mover” industries must modernise big monolithic stacks, while “fast-followers” need to connect many small, isolated machines—each path demands a different playbook.
• Prototype, Market Internally, then Scale
  Run a quick “show-and-tell” pilot, secure an executive sponsor, and broadcast wins so other plants ask to join—momentum matters more than tech.
• Follow the Three-Circle Loop: Understand → Cooperate → Scale & Sustain
  Build mutual trust and a clear business case, formalise cross-silo teams, deploy a platform that avoids endless pilots—then repeat.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
02:42 David's Journey in Digitalization and IT/OT Convergence
05:15 Education Gaps in IT and OT
06:13 Challenges in Accessing Educational Content
08:28 Infrastructure and Data Convergence
11:00 Differentiating Industries: First Movers vs. Fast Followers
13:14 The Role of the ITOT Academy and Community Engagement
17:06 The Rise of Industry 4.0 Discord
18:22 Bridging the Gap: Connecting Like-Minded Individuals
19:36 Understanding IT and OT Collaboration
21:11 The Importance of Common Language in Technology
22:57 Building Trust in Organizational Change
25:44 Navigating the Challenges of IT and OT Integration
28:49 Strategies for Successful Collaboration
32:15 The 3 Circles of Collaboration: Understand, Cooperate, Scale
34:05 Final Thoughts: Key Takeaways for Moving Forward

Transcript

Alexander Krüger
Welcome to another episode of the Connected Factory podcast. Today it's a little bit of a different setup because now Jeremy and I are both in the studio and we have a very special guest with us, David from ITOT Insider. David, who are you?

David
Okie dokie, good.

Alexander Krüger
I know who you are, so don't get me wrong, but everybody outside who not might heard about what you're doing, what are you passionate about,

David
you

David
digitalization or ITOT geek, if you want to call me that way. So who am I? I'm actually a mathematical engineer. So I studied deep learning things and support vector machines and all the cool AI stuff back at university. And then for some reason, I got passionate about model predictive control. So my thesis was actually about implementing MPC in an distillation column. And that led me to start working in the chemical industry, actually. And it was basically a coincidence because I honestly, I didn't really see the link between mathematics and data and the chemical industry.

When I was still studying for me, it was something like this is for chemical engineers and mechanical engineers and you know that that that type of profiles so Almost coincidentally. I started working at the chemical industry for a well-known German chemical company BSF And started as a data scientist but soon found the passion to be in digital operator stuff, data, cybersecurity. So I would say a bit more on the infrastructure slash platform side of things. So in my 12 years there, I got the opportunity to lead one of the, I would say, biggest teams of digitalization engineers working on, I would say, the entire Antwerp site, which is one of the largest chemical sites in the world.

I was also able to lead their EMEA program for industry 4.0 and also their global cybersecurity program. So lots of fun things. And then three years ago, I wanted to do something totally different. So I switched over from end user.

David
Yeah, to your site, basically. So from end user to software supplier, wanted to see other industries, wanted to learn some new skills. So I started managing a company called Analytics for Industry, which is basically an industrial data ops solution provider. And then I was sitting in these meetings and this is the, I would say the perfect lean way, I would say into this episode about learning and about understanding each other, et cetera, because...

I was sitting in these meetings and I was really at this intersection between IT and OT. And I still see myself sitting in literally in the middle of a table where one side was IT and the other side was OT. And we were in a full day workshop and it took us a couple of hours to at a certain point to understand that the things we were saying, so on both sides of the table,

We were saying the same words, we didn't, there was not the same understanding of these words. And then together with Willem, who is a former colleague, that's, and also because we just wanted to do something together, brought us to launch the ITOT Insider. Started as a blog, just us writing random articles on things we encounter while doing our job. Willem's still in the chemical industry and then Mia, I would say on the other side.

on the dark side, I don't know, it's a bit on the dark side. So yeah, as on both sides, we just started writing articles, we saw that that's created quite some traction, the blog started to grow, so we also added the podcasts to that as well. And then, yes, since now, we also added our ITOT Academy to it, and I'm sure we'll discuss that later as well.

Alexander Krüger
Yeah.

Alexander Krüger
full circle moment, would say. Really coming from the pain, understanding it from there and then trying to build something to help on top.

David
Yeah.

Alexander Krüger
This is also a little bit on this. Also why we have this, I would say Jeremy's special episode set up here now, because this is also what we discovered back then. this education gap and you're talking about the same stuff from just two perspectives. think in the process industry, it's super pronounced because they also use a lot of software. in, in discrete manufacturing, it's all always about integrated controls. And then you have software to set it up, but you're not using like software to necessary control your production. And there, I think.

David
Yeah.

Alexander Krüger
think it's super pronounced. So Jeremy came from the other side, from the IT world, and now trying to tackle the problems that OT has, but just take the boxes and put it in the bucket where IT already solved it. So what do you think is wrong with education in IT and OT space? So where's the gap?

David
Yeah, that's a good question. I don't think there is too much education in this space. Jamie, I see you saying yes, so I assume you agree.

Alexander Krüger
Yeah.

Alexander Krüger
Yes, yes, yes. It was why I was at the beginning super frustrated when I came into the industry. It was like, okay, everyone's talking about these concepts. So maybe I just, yeah, just Google it at that point of time. You still Google things. And I just couldn't find much like there was. And I think this is

David
Yeah.

Alexander Krüger
true for also a lot of other people. Like they just want to learn about stuff and then, yeah, they somehow they stumble upon. I think there's like real parts for like very hardcore OT stuff. There is Walker Reynolds. There is our stuff. But the most stuff, so the so-called glorified white papers, they're now always then behind like an access wall, which is if you want to learn, give me your email address.

David
yeah.

Alexander Krüger
and we just spam you for the rest of time. Yeah, this is a great year.

David
Don't get me started on those white papers because it's always like we see this problem and buy our solution.

Alexander Krüger
I don't think they're educational content and also they're not great by any people with technical knowledge, like mostly. Mostly it's a marketing thing where a lot of marketing people sit there and yeah, there are good in, there might be good insights in it.

But it's like put in a lot of marketing fluff, so it's very difficult to get it. the end, it's like, oh, a solution. But as I also run, obviously, the Go to Market site in our company. And then if like other like professionals were advising and always say, why you just not use your great content to capture demand. But I think we are an open source company. It doesn't work that way. If we do that, we lose trust, we lose community. And I think this is also why you're actually already

David
Yep.

Alexander Krüger
success because you're paying forward and I think this is the right thing to do because you're the only one doing that.

David
I'm you're saying because I'm also not really finding a lot of other content as well. Now what they do, and that's maybe a little sidetrack here, is there is an amazing amount of great content on the IT side of the world, which we can actually adapt to an industrial setting as well. That's also what we are doing.

Alexander Krüger
yes, definitely.

David
But even if you look at this from a typical or a normal educational point of view, so universities or schools or whatever, you either select, and there probably are some exceptions, but typically you either select the IT track, which is probably the most common one, computer science or something.

similar or you choose more an engineering automation track either from a professional standpoint or an academic standpoint but this thing linking the two worlds together doesn't really exist. So it's not only a problem that you can't really google it, it's also a problem that you can't really go to school and people who study don't typically come to the

Alexander Krüger
Mm.

David
to the industry with this body of knowledge. So it's a double problem, I guess.

Alexander Krüger
and also don't align on words. So if you're talking about the same problems, for example, high availability. So in a production sense of things, you need that for scalar systems, obviously, or like some production-critical systems. If they cannot record, for example, in the pharma industry, you're not allowed to sell the product anymore, and they are aligning already early, or trying to, we are trying, and as you are also trying to, this is a solved problem. Just use that word, and you'll find educational materials on the IC side is,

David
Yeah.

Alexander Krüger
I think it's super super important, yeah. But I think it's because the autism tends to be very closed. There are a lot of things that have already been sold for years, but still they're like... They kept like...

David
Yeah.

Alexander Krüger
Yeah, like, like hidden, you don't, you don't explain those concepts. So, I just did a video series about down sampling with swinging door trending and everything around it. And there's, and everyone's just saying like super high compression rates and nobody's been really explaining like, how does it actually work? And it's all there. Like it's a patent from the nineties, which is expired. Like it's, it's, it's very well described everything. it's just.

David
Mm. Mm.

David
Mm-hmm.

David
yeah.

Alexander Krüger
Nobody wants to put it out. Everyone, like you said, just puts it in white papers, talks about the business impact, and that's it.

David
Yeah, and it's funny that those concepts in most, I would say, traditional OT tools are always the same. Like, I've now been working with, for example, three different historians, and I learned these downsampling concepts the first time somewhere, I don't know, 12, 13, 14, 15 years ago. And then, you you go to the next one and you go like, oh, it's actually the same. And then you go to the next one and you go like, is it really literally the same? Literally the same.

Alexander Krüger
Yeah, it is the same. doesn't matter if you call it exception reporting, report by exception, dead band is more like the IT term. Yeah, but it's in the nature of those.

David
But to come back to this thing where, yes, there are silos and there are, in my opinion, also really, really good reasons to have those silos. I think it is, I would say, from a core automation point of view, it is perfectly fine to have your PLC programmers and your SCADA programmers being embedded in your operations organization. Nothing wrong with that. Now...

So when I started cybersecurity at BASF almost 15 years ago, we were of the opinion that we should also split things like, for example, infrastructure and cybersecurity. Because we said like, yeah, but cybersecurity, that's something really, really, really special for OT. And I think with time progressing, I think everybody in the world or most people in the world started understanding that

hackers don't care about ITOT boundaries. But it's, you have to collaborate on this topic. Now there are still, of course, different things. And obviously you need to treat your PLCs and your SCADA systems and your, I don't know, your analyzers and you still need to treat them in a different way. But I think we kind of figured out that, and we call it on our blog, we call that a

infrastructure convergence. we because there is no such thing as IT OT convergence. In my opinion, there is this thing called infrastructure convergence, where we said like, okay, a couple of years ago, most of us kind of understood that that's that's from an infrastructure point of view, you can't have double firewalls, and you can't have double security event monitors. And you you you can't have you know, you don't want to buy your double licenses for your threat protection or something like that you want an integrated policy.

Also because you want one person responsible for cybersecurity. But if you look where we are at today, I would say infrastructure convergence kind of done and dusted. And yes, there are some things to take into account. But today we're talking about data convergence. And this data convergence thing, this is where I would say we're really struggling with.

Alexander Krüger
Yeah, also

thinking about how IT and OT actually work from the openness factor. if you like talk infrastructure on OT side of things, everything is super, super close guard. If you go cyber security, it's then security is through obscurity. So fundamentally like this. Don't let anyone tell them about the IP address. The IP address are hidden. we can't, there's an exo-treat with the IP addresses. Whoa, this is top secret. And this was like, we had like one customer

David
Yeah, just imagine.

Alexander Krüger
like we wanted to integrate with and then we wanted to ask me what actually your IP address to PC we want to connect.

Yeah, but we can only give you one sheet with the IP addresses and one sheet with the names of the machines because in one sheet, it be huge cybersecurity risk. And then they have like VLANs in between network segments and just stable stuff on each other, just hiding complexity and hiding stuff. I think this is really, if you think about it, really the nature of OT in a lot of things just being a little bit guarded. If you think about Siemens, like sue everybody who was like going into like their compiling algorithm or going into

David
Mm-hmm.

David
Yeah.

Alexander Krüger
to this newer protocols, et cetera. So this is quite a different way of thinking. And this is also the fear that normally OT carries forward, this security, and then you can hide a lot of things behind it.

David
But if you take that mindset and you take the mindset of Jeremy what you said like our super since the 90s compression algorithm which you know only we understand and you take the mindset of yeah we have these old machines which we need to protect as much as possible and then you bolt on top of that stack an old-school historian nothing wrong with an historian I love my historians but

Alexander Krüger
Yep.

David
But what then? So then we still have data sitting in this thing. Probably you have to pay extra license costs to get your data out. Abacus. you are, that's one engineer who needs data. So yeah, now we need to buy you this, now we need to sell you this license.

Alexander Krüger
But there's the EU data act now. So let's see what happens, but yeah, there's a lot in place.

I actually wrote a blog article about that a couple of months ago; the title comes from Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”—it really fits. And when I was reading this for the first time, I realised that until both sides agree on what the words mean, nobody understands what they’re talking about. That’s what we also need to change.

Alexander Krüger
Thank …

David
… to, I would say, change. And let’s again learn from people outside our bubble. Have one of you read The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim?

Alexander Krüger
No, but I’ve heard about it often. It’s about an IT manager who suddenly gets a factory thrown at him and he’s experiencing a lot of problems, and it’s kind of like a novel on DevOps, right?

David
Exactly. Gene is a really smart guy and the book explains DevOps from an IT angle. But if you read it from an IT/OT perspective, this is exactly what goes wrong in our space too. The idea is: create flow, create feedback, create continuous learning. Those three things map perfectly onto shop-floor digitalisation. We can steal that.

Alexander Krüger
Makes sense.

David
Which brings me to another point: when we talk about cooperation models we always end up at “centre of excellence versus local teams.” My view: you need both. A central group sets standards and provides basic services, then each plant or business unit has embedded people who actually do the work. Otherwise you end up with endless pilots.

Alexander Krüger
Yes—pilots that never scale.

David
Exactly. And that’s why Willem and I use a three-circle model—Understand → Cooperate → Scale & Sustain.
• Understand: build shared language and business case.
• Cooperate: decide who owns what and give them room to work.
• Scale & Sustain: build a platform you can roll out quickly, with guardrails, so you don’t start from scratch every time.

If you skip any circle you stall. Most companies jump straight to pilots (circle 2) without real understanding, so they die in the gap to circle 3.

Alexander Krüger
That gap hurts.

David
It does, and internal marketing helps to bridge it. Celebrate small wins. Put screens in the canteen showing real dashboards. Let people see the value so other plants ask to join instead of you begging them.

Alexander Krüger
Totally agree. And being honest about failures matters too—share what didn’t work so others don’t repeat it.

David
Yes! We’ve seen so many slide-decks full of sunshine. Reality is messier. If leadership mandates transparency, bottom-up teams feel safe to admit problems, then things really move.

Alexander Krüger
But you still need that top-down mandate, otherwise bottom-up runs out of air.

David
Right. The company has to say, “We will fund this and remove blockers,” but then let the doers do. Otherwise you get skunk-works teams who build cool stuff nobody adopts.

Alexander Krüger
Good point.

David
One last thing: we often forget people-centred design. Tools must feel native to operators. If the HMI or dashboard looks like a spaceship cockpit, nobody uses it. Invest in UX.

Alexander Krüger
Haha, yes—no more twenty-button screens! Keep it simple.

David
Exactly. So, to wrap up: shared language, balanced organisation, and relentless internal marketing. Do that and you avoid endless pilots and actually scale.

Alexander Krüger
Nice summary. And because you’re politely avoiding sales pitches, I’ll do it: listeners, check out itot-insider.com and the IT/OT Academy—great place to start.

David
Thank you! Would love to welcome everybody. And fun fact: “academy” domain actually existed, so why not?

Alexander Krüger
Good choice. This was fun. Talk to you soon, David—it was a pleasure.

David
Thanks, bye-bye.

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