Making calls, writing reports, doing the rounds – RCR Wireless stopped by industrial juggernaut Siemens to ask, effectively, what it made of comments by US system integrator Kyndryl last week that even the best-laid 5G-IT/OT integration plans go awry when heavy-handed IT goes up against headstrong OT. “There will be no one-sided enforcement of [private] 5G by IT; OT will only implement 5G if it sees the clear value for production,” came the response. Which appears to put the matter to bed: OT is the gatekeeper for private 5G, like all other Industry 4.0 technologies, even if IT is the bookkeeper.
Except we know that, already – that plant managers in charge of operating technology (OT) on the factory floor must be consulted to scope the original use case and define the initial business case in order for IT to sign the sales contract, orchestrate the deployment, and eventually to replicate the solution across a wider factory footprint. But that is not what Kyndryl is getting at, and not what Siemens is saying (and agreeing with). Its point is that this OT-approved process cannot be performed just once, and unilaterally enforced across multiple industrial sites – which are all similar, but all different, architecturally and culturally.
This kind-of Industry 4.0 commission process, which applies just the same with private 5G, has to be executed and repeated, every time, for every site. As above, Daniel Mai, director of industrial wireless at Siemens, comments: “On the shop floor, the implementation of 5G must always be driven by OT. It’s not just about having a 5G signal in production, but about implementing industrial, sometimes very complex applications with 5G. Production facilities must run reliably, otherwise money will be lost.” Which is why, as Kyndryl contends, private 5G projects so often come unstuck when they get to scale.
Does IT properly understand OT when it attempts to scale 5G to multiple sites? Does it understand the system integration (SI) and radio access (RAN) complexity? Mai responds: “Often, there is a knowledge gap. IT teams may not fully grasp the intricacies of OT environments and their applications, or the complexities involved in systems integration and RAN deployments. This can result in inadequate planning and unforeseen technical challenges during scaling.” He does not go into the cultural clash that sometimes ensues when IT seeks to scale unilateral KPI-changing 5G infrastructure on unsuspecting OT departments.
But it is all there in the Kyndryl piece, and Siemens (actually responding in email) confirms where the ultimate power lies if private 5G deployments are to scale to new workloads and workplaces without crippling internal disruption. Generally, how do you balance bespoke customization and simple replicability – in pursuit of scale? The question is asked for an upcoming report, out next week, which gathers a bunch of industry commentary, and considers how the telecoms industry can seek to make a better box-shifting exercise out of a gnarly over-engineered jigsaw process. To an extent, the work has been done, says Mai.
“Industry-specific blueprints provide proven framework conditions for the implementation of 5G solutions. Based on these, systems can be easily adapted individually to requirements arising from the individual applications – for example, in terms of quantity structures or cybersecurity requirements.” Indeed, cookie-cutter ‘blueprints’ to devise domain-specific designs have been talked about for five years already. Good progress has been made, it seems – to the point a loose 80/20 rule applies, where the donkey work is done in blueprints, and bespoke integration is reduced to a manageable engineering assignment on top.
But really, actually, such blueprint-modularity is to get the business case over the line, arguably. Cellular, progressively more powerful and important for futuristic Industry 4.0 projects, is also novel and imperfect; it is packed with goodness, but it still tastes funny. Because it uses SIM cards, separate radio assets, and different management functions; and, despite some work by cellular equipment vendors, it exists separately from familiar IT systems. So how integrated is 5G into IT systems now — in terms of IT access controls and policies, in order to synchronise with IT-orchestrated OT assets and systems?
Mai responds: “Currently, integration is in the nascent stages. While some organisations have begun incorporating 5G into their IT frameworks for user control and device management, comprehensive integration with OT systems remains limited. Challenges include ensuring security, managing diverse devices, and aligning policies across platforms.” In terms of barriers to scale, which Siemens lists here, creeping progress with IT/OT integration is the killer – for private 5G to be easily welcomed into global IT/OT estates. But, also, this is the final frontier; the fuzzy end of the lollipop.
Because there is a job just to convince enterprises that private 5G holds proper business value to them – a challenge, in the first place, to get them even to suck on the sticky end of the lollipop. Do enterprises even get 5G? Does enterprise ‘have a 5G problem’ – to borrow a phrase? Mai responds: “Many enterprises recognize the potential of 5G but often lack a clear strategy for its implementation. Challenges arise when organisations invest in the technology without fully understanding how to integrate it into their operations, leading to underutilization and missed opportunities.”