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Downtime disrupts the supply chain on the front and back end of the food and beverage industry. Behind the curtain; profits and compliance are at risk when the production floor grinds to a halt. Safety also becomes a concern since injuries often occur when equipment is down, plant managers have limited visibility or systems are in maintenance mode.

The rising tide of data that organizations now receive, manage and analyse shows no signs of receding. The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) in particular has increased data management exponentially. More than ever before, the need for reliable hardware and accessibility solutions is a pivotal part of most organizations’ long-term plans.

Manufacturers leaning on outdated, stacked systems could very well find themselves left behind if they don’t modernize in order to keep pace with the explosive IoT. Gartner predicts that by 2020 the number of IoT devices will reach an astounding 50 billion. The need to maintain a system with zero downtime will continue to rise as the the existing network of physical devices grows.

In this second article in our virtualization series, we take a closer look the benefits of virtualization, especially how it can provide the perfect solution for desktop environments.

This article offers highlights from a recent newsletter featuring Gartner content. Learn how digital businesses can stay competitive by adopting an edge computing strategy.

When the future is indefinitely smart machines and everything and anything can be a service, you must stop to ask yourself, when does it makes sense for industrial operations to take this on? As we embark on the next revolution with Industry 4.0 and the digital transformation IA is undertaking, is the OT infrastructure ready for XaaS?

This first article in our new virtualization series details the evolution of this technology while highlighting the importance of hardware and availability.

For most the path to IIoT will be an evolutionary journey. Before you can start to tap the potential of next-generation, big data-driven, intelligent automation, you must modernize the foundation on which it is built. And that means taking a hard look at existing operational technology. Modernizing your infrastructure will deliver incredible benefits in terms of reliability and manageability to create a future-proof platform to build your organization’s IIoT strategy.

Large Fortune 500 companies with deep pockets are investing in IIoT technologies. These projects are yielding results, although implementations are not without their challenges. An increasing number of industrial companies are looking at ways to leverage analytics, outside of the traditional applications that helped them on the production side. Some have a clear idea of what they want to achieve, some are trying to understand what various technologies could do for them. What does seem clear is that some form of IT/OT convergence and collaboration is necessary to achieve success.

Stratus’s Downtime Prevention Buyer’s Guide, explains that the reason downtime negatively impacts all this rich, in-flight data is because, “When a system outage occurs all data and transactions not yet written to disk are at risk of being lost or corrupted.” This means data that could be used to predict and prevent future catastrophes may be lost forever.