Role of IT changing from Central IT to Consultant IT as new devices/ and services become absorbed into the industrial architecture?

I thought this paper (below) introduced a fascinating discussion on the changing role of IT, from central IT to more of a guideline, consultant to management of devices and services in an organization. In the industrial space,  we have seen leading companies go from enforcing mobile device (the one issued by the company) to issuing one, but also allowing employees to bring in their private preference of the device and connect it to the corporate network and use it in the day a to day work job.

 This research is necessary, because it reflects and profiles a new order in directing and controlling the use of information technology, which we need to expand » 

Business Leaders Spending On Technology Because It's Too Important To Let I.T. Go It Alone

www.forbes.com

By John McCarthy In the Forrester report, "Tracking the Renegade Technology Buyer", we uncover the motivations and technology spending priorities of over 1,000 John McCarthy North American and European business executives. The data from the Forrsights Business Decision Maker Survey was collected in Q4, 2012. Of the 891 respondents that had a budget [...]

This trend will only continue as the Gen Y and Gen X will not put up with different experiences, therefore different operational processes. Another trend is the rapid mind switch from having to build specific applications for me or my plant/ role, to accepting “good enough” applications that can be down loaded and up and running in minutes, with limited configuration. Providing a significant increase in information available and for that last 20 to 30% that comes with custom systems people are questioning the time, cost and sustainability. This mind shift has come with home, commercial experience of the applications on the “Application stores” just search and select one and accept the value it brings the expectation is not that I can customize it significantly.

Example the applications below provide in a 10 minute setup and download (as long as the site has the remote connector that publishes the data to the cloud in a secure manner) 80% of the information many roaming workers need. Is it ideal layout reports in standard corporate format no, but it is “good enough” and is self serviced by the user delivering significantly more information than they have today.

On the back end systems,  the same is happening as the acceptance of SAAS and managed services within the Industrial Operational architecture grows, the need to have IT infrastructure reduces ut the capability grows in computing and capability by leveraging the service provider. IT will have to manage these service providers and plug them into the industrial architecture in a secure way that is aligned with the IT guidelines of cooperation.

One discussion this week was with large process company, and they said why would they use “cloud” in their operations they have covered in their industrial automation/ operations systems. This contradicted the operations team in the same company who are concerned about operational continuity and uptime, and with the increasing upgrades, security patches, they looking for the maintaining vital decision support capability at higher availability, a key advantage of a managed service is the increased availability. Combine this with the need to increase the information on an issue to a worker so decisions can be made faster. The discussion shifted to the requirement for understanding the “future” through “what ifs” and how that can be made available to all workers. This is near real-time activity, and could e a service hosted in the cloud (public or private) consumed by the users as needed,not all the time, but the computing power will need to elastic. It was not long before the IT member of the discussion was seeing the opportunity, and asking more questions, this will be increasing situation/ discussion over the next 12 months in the industrial sector.  

The growing influence of operations, and how to empower operational decisions in an increasing climate of workforce transition, and rotation, the acceptance by IT of using my device, and allowing these applications. Shifting IT’s role from not providing as this is coming from out side either with the device or from the service provider, but to consultant that provides guidelines and maintains the integrity of the security system.

Interesting thought and trend!  

Information vs Data Leads Discussion on the Future of Operations!

“Gather all the plant data and analyze afterwards” are common words you hear about the market, but when the discussion happens this approach a “putting head in the sand” approach, with limited bigger picture consideration. Today the key to agility is empowerment of decisions and actions in the NOW. This does not require data it requires trustworthy, in context information.  The last couple of weeks has enabled some fascinating and productive engagements. In a discussion,  last week at a Mining Thought leadership on the future a sizable group of interested people attended and took part in discussions.  

A key concept of “mine of the future” and actually for most industries oil and gas, power, food etc. is the agility to take more holistic operational view of the system and day to day operations. This requires alignment at 3 loops (the diagram illustrates these loops) of operations with the alignment in decision and actions. Foundational to this is the information that decisions are based on, requires not HISTORIANS but Plant/ Operational Information Systems, that align information and actions for effective use my different operational roles. Companies that make this foundational move will have a system where data structure, validation is “managed” not coded, that the system is trust worthy so people will depend on and use the system.

To many times the discussion with mining and process end users who are implementing an information system for increased decisions support, that they require a re look at the data sources and how to put it in context, and validated. An example of this was a coal company in South Africa they had spent significant time working on an information system and the historians and data warehouses, but lost effectiveness through:

• Data alignment across sources, E.g.| Finding different data streams that effected the same asset calculation for say energy.
• Data validation
• Data structure

The conversation remarkably quickly ended up going back to redo of the structure of data coming into the historians, and getting this data structured, validated before it went into historian. They had two choices either going to source in this case PLCs and adjusting the running code (not a smart idea), or put a structuring layer in which would structure the data, validate the data, and provide high availability and single names space to manage over the distributed historians.

This is a departure from the story he was told that just put a historian in and capture the data worry about analysis afterwards, that is old and in effective saying. As discussed in the “mine of the future” discussions  the challenge is to “federate” the existing data sources on a plant, E.g.| Historians, alarm event data logs, operator logs, and delay, downtime data bases, E.g.| The alignment of the data sources into effective information that actions can be taken. The concept of “self service” becomes necessary, as there was a lot of comment around of trying to minimize the process analysis phase and role in the data, and try to get effective information to operational people quickly. Another example is an oil and gas plant’s decision system that is effectively been run 24 hours out of phase with the plant, by only have decision able reports/ dashboards from the past 24 hours at 2 to 3 in the afternoon so. Again this delay was due to data gathering, data alignment, validation, in MS Excel manually done by 3 people, the company was exploring ways to eliminate this manual creation, so the whole process is “near real time”.

A clear message from the last couple of weeks is we need to step back, align the existing systems, to provide that key foundation for operational empowerment, absorb significant milestones such as advancement in the communication infrastructures; Example putting 4G communications in the Pilbra mining area (remote north western Australia), providing significant data capability. (A topic for next week). This need to absorbed into the industrial / operational Architecture, internet will be a natural part of the backbone, leveraging computing power remotely for functions, such as storage, analysis, model running, help accelerate the decision support.   

Third Time Lucky for MOM/ MES Architectures?

For the last 15 to 20 years companies have implemented MES (Manufacturing Execution System)  systems, and MOM (Manufacturing Operations Management) systems, remembering MOM is a super set of MES. These implementations executions have been both custom, and using off the shelf applications for MES, and success has varied, but even the successful ones are struggling to evolve to current agile requirements due to the method of implementation. One end user asked me on the flight “has MES been successful?”, I stepped back and thought about a couple customs who have implemented end to end MES. Based on one MES system so that manufacturing master data is managed by one system, with the customer stating their MES has been the most valuable software implementation on the plants, it just works and is the heart of their manufacturing. So the answer is yes, but the fact of the question allowed me to reflect on the normal bumpy roads MES implementations have had.

I was read Charlie Gifford’s latest book “The MES Chronicles” (ISA 95 best practices book 3.0), which has a set of articles around Gartners’ Manufacturing 2.0, explaining the concepts, and reality to the concepts. It is well worth the read if you are looking at the industrial/ manufacturing operations space.

 

 

In the introduction,  Charlie does an excellent job raising the challenges of MES, and the fact that we now with Manufacturing 2.0 going through actually the third architectural attempt at MES. How true his comments are when I reflect on my own career which had gone through all 3 since 1995 when we released InTrack (original MES Product).  A key consideration to this discussion is that MES is a concept of managing the executing the manufacturing, with the off the shelf solutions and customer systems built for a particular industry  with rules and practices for that industry. So looking at Invensys’s first generation MES system InTrack it was built for the semi conductor/ electronic industry, and the outstanding success stories I referred to were from that industry. Invensys’s second generation product built Wonderware MES for food and Beverage industry, and again has worked remarkably well in that industry and related industries. This does not mean they cannot be applied in other industries, but the “glove fits well”. That is why I do not like the generalization of MES, we should categorizing them by industry types, to help selection, and stop companies force fitting the wrong models into their practices.

Charlie in his book reflected on the three generations of MES/ MOM as:

“20% of advanced manufacturers discovered that the first two MOM attempts lead to:

• High cost MOM systems with extremely poor data integrity
• High cost change during new production introductions, production scaling time to market and continuous improvement.”

“ The first two MOM attempts occurred in the 1990s, and 2000s, actually were also found a primary hinderance to continuous improvement efforts because the MOM system owners were typically understaffed, under skilled, and un governed to support real innovation. “

His % might be low, but the point is that MES / MOM solutions have typically been architected in a “point to point” / application integration, with high levels of customization restricting evolution to the original developer. Many of the original InTrack MES implementations have maintained the database well, and the rules within it, but significant custom code has been developed for human interaction and data validation, and data validation on automated events acting on the system.  Like highly customized ERP implementations the ability to evolve , upgrade the systems become an anchor on manufacturing agility. Yet that is the reason why people put these systems to increase efficiency and consistency of production, but the issue is manufacturing practices, new product introduction is constantly changing and evolving, and the systems must be able to absorb this change naturally if the implementation are going to allow for the required agility needed today.

So the third attempt at MOM with the Manufacturing 2.0 concepts undoubtedly lead to:

·         An SOA (service orientated Architecture) that allows plug and play of the 15 to 20 Operational applications required to run a plant, allow the inter-operability to set up using messages through sustained services vs application integration.

·         This integration is a model based using tools such as workflow and sustainable environment.

·         Validation and data entry rules will be model driven, so that embedded best practices, that can evolve in a sustainable way as staff evolve in the organization.

·         Semantic information, and data management models based on proven models such as ISA 95 will enable existing and different models of the different operational applications to align.

The book outlines many of the concepts. MES are not a standalone product, it is  an architecture that merges level 2 events from automation, with validation of data, events in a structure asset/ operations model that can interact with the different operational applications through the life of a manufacturing operation. Key is the acceptance of  architecture which has model driven interoperability (so the model can evolve with governance) and the introduction of workflow to be a natural part of the operational system to capture the procedures as embedded operations that again have governance so can evolve as the practices of the plants change. Like successful ERP implementation, customization must be avoided, configuration within the tools provided make the system sustainable, but this will be a mind shift for people. Too often people talk about APIs, and taking coding tools to build a solution, this is fine for the short term, but will come back and bite when time for change and evolution. The project and program owners at the end users need to take a more holistic view and enforce an architectural cadence of configuration vs programing and making sure the “human to application”, and “application  to application” integration are model centric approach where configured services  using workflow configuration is key.

 

 

Can Sustainable Manufacturing Operations Management Exist without Master Data Management? NO,

Again last week the discussion of operational integration raged in few project discussions with customers, without really understanding the arguments and I needed to pull out a log from mid last year on Operational Data Management. Data Model Alignment will be key in a viable interoperability architecture for level 3 applications with out “rip and replace approach” in making Manufacturing Operations Management sustainable and effective.    

Synching between systems, people look at data warehouses , they do manual binding, but these are just not practical in a sustainable and every changing world. There are many systems usually upwards of 20 + systems which come from different vendors and even if they do come from the same vendor they implemented by different cultures in the plants. The thought pattern on “just asset naming” is different between these groups. So the concept of Master Data Management (MDM) for Industry is a hidden one, but we believe is a key one for the future of sustainable solutions that are federating multiple systems together, so expect to see investments and products to trying to address this. In this blog I want to have a discussion on why MDM what it is, and Gerhard has done a good job, and I will expand on it.

 

When you are talking to customers you see comments and projects and so many are trying to deal with this issue without really looking at the big problem and plan. The same issue of naming happens with Assets between the Alarming system, MES system, Batch System, and EAM system for example. The capacity or size of a asset(Eg Tank) is key to their operations but often changes are made to the actual asset and then say the EAM and alarming systems are updated but the others are not realized, and the plant starts up with half the systems updated. Yes now you get faults and plant delays, and trouble shooting. Imagine having a system that is aware of all the systems that are modeling an aspect of that asset in their data models, now you can have a “master change management” over it been changed at one location and making sure it is changed at all systems prior to start up, even if updates are manual.

Again Borrowing from As Gerhard Greeff – Divisional Manager at Bytes Systems Integration put it in his paper"When last did you revisit your MOM?"

“MDM or Master Data Management is the tool used to relate data between different applications.

So what is master data and why should we care? According to Wikipedia, “Master Data Management (MDM) comprises a set of processes and tools that consistently defines and manages the non-transactional data entities of an organization (which may include reference data). MDM has the objective of providing processes for collecting, aggregating, matching, consolidating, assuring quality, persisting and distributing such data throughout an organization to ensure consistency and control in the ongoing maintenance and application use of this information.”

Processes commonly seen in MDM solutions include source identification, data collection, data transformation, normalization, rule administration, error detection and correction, data consolidation, data storage, data distribution, and data governance.

Why is it necessary to differentiate between enterprise MDM and Manufacturing MDM (mMDM)? According to MESA, in the vast majority of cases, the engineering bill-of-materials (BOM), the routing, or the general recipe from your ERP or formulation/PLM systems simply lack the level of detail necessary to:

1. Run detailed routings through shared shop resources

2. Set up the processing logic your batch systems execute

3. Scale batch sizes to match local equipment assets

4. Set up detailed machine settings

This problem is compounded by heterogeneous legacy systems, mistrust/disbelief in controlled MOM systems, data ownership issues, and data inconsistency. The absence of strong, common data architecture promotes ungoverned data definition proliferation, point-to-point integration and parochial data management strategies. Within the manufacturing environment, all this translates into many types of waste and added cost.

The master data required to execute production processes is highly dependent upon individual assets and site-specific considerations, all of which are subject to change at a much higher frequency than typical enterprise processes like order-entry or payables processing. As a result, manufacturing master data will be a blend of data that is not related specifically to site level details (such as a customer ID or high-level product specifications shared between enterprise order-entry systems and the plant) and site-specific or “local” details such as equipment operating characteristics (which may vary by local humidity, temperature, and drive speed) or even local raw material characteristics.

This natural division between enterprise master data and “local” or manufacturing master data suggests specific architectural approaches to manufacturing master data management (mMDM) which borrow heavily from Enterprise MDM models, but which are tuned to the specific requirements of the manufacturing environment.

Think of a company that has acquired various manufacturing entities over time. They have consolidated their Enterprise systems, but at site level, things are different. Different sites may call the same raw material different things (for instance 11% HCl, Hydrochloric acid, Pool Acid, Hydrochloric 11% etc.). Then this same raw material may also have different names in the Batch system, the SCADA, the LIMS, the Stores system, the Scheduling system and the MOM. This makes it extremely difficult to report for instance on the consumption of Hydrochloric Acid from a COO perspective, as without a mMDM for instance, the consumption query will have to be tailored for each site and system in order to abstract the quantities for use.

The alternative of course is to initiate a naming standardization exercise that can take years to complete as changes will be required on most level 2 and 3 systems. That is not even taking into account the redevelopment of visualization and the retraining of operators. The question is, once the naming standardization is complete, who owns the master naming convention and who ensures that plants don’t once again diverge over time as new products and materials are added?

The example above is a very simple one, for a raw material, but it can also be applied to other resources, utilities, equipment, operating parameters, recipes, WIP and products. If a company has for instance implemented a barcode scanning solution, the item numbers for a specific product or component may differ between suppliers. How will the system know what product/component has been received or issued to the plant without some translation taking place somewhere? mMDM will thus resolve a lot of issues that manufacturing companies are experiencing today in their strive for more flexible integration between level 3 and level 4 systems.

Figure blow shows the relation between mMDM, MDM, SOA and SOAm and how they are meant to operate together.

The objective of the proposed split in architecture is to increase application flexibility without reducing the effectiveness and efficiency of the integration between systems. It also abstracts the interface mechanisms out of the application into services that can operate regardless of application changes. This will get rid of numerous “point-to-point” interfaces and make systems more flexible in order to adapt to changing conditions. The SOAm architecture also abstracts business processes and their orchestration from the individual applications into an operations business process management layer.  Now, one person is able to interact with multiple applications to track or manage a production order without even realizing that he/she is jumping between applications.

Even with SOAm and mMDM, integration will not be efficient and effective unless message structures and data exchange are in a standard format. This is where ISA-95 once again plays a big part in ensuring interface effectiveness and consistency. Without standardized data exchange structures and schemas, not even mMDM and SAOm will enable interface re-use.

ISA-95 provides standards for information exchange as well as standardized data structures and XML message schemas based on the Business-to-Manufacturing Mark-up Language (B2MML) developed by WBF, including the verbs and nouns for data exchange. Standardizing these throughout the manufacturing operations ensures that standard services are developed to accommodate multiple applications. “

Why not a central directory “Yellow Pages” that manages this relationship without replication????

 

Operational Work Mgmt Key to the Success of Operational Teams

This week I had two companies discuss with me Operational Efficiency across teams, trying to understand what is required. The methods they are using today are in efficient and disjointed the desire is a more efficient use of human assets and reduction in errors. The discussions revealed two common characteristics:

• Companies who have operational teams: Maintaining the traditional “swim lanes” of their departments, with the only common interaction a day in the “morning” meeting. A percentage of the morning meeting  lost in aligning / updating the data on tasks and action status due an inconsistent approach to managing, recording work across the organization.
• Significant work behavior and prioritization are “ad hoc/ fire fighting” at the operational/ plant level vs a planned coordinated and efficient work execution with the most suited skills executed the appropriate tasks.  

One company discussed their implementation of  an electronic log book system across all disciplines to at least have a common list of actions. This certainly improved the efficiency of the morning meeting and a common foundation to run the tasks, but it was clear that there was something missing. Combining the other challenge of forming a fluid, dynamic operational team, made up of different disciplines where the traditional swim lane of departments are broken down. Resulting in a living team of different skills that can react to different situations many times in a day, with teams making sure work items can be executed across the team to a result without dropping the ball.

A couple of weeks I introduced the concept of operational work, at a high level, with the seven aspects to achieve effective work management across a team. This should not be new to many people as they are happening today within in silos such as Asset Management. The different is now applying the concepts across all aspects of the operational day, and how to improve the process. The operational team has also expanded with the experts more than often be outside the plant and need to accessed.  Work Item is the key concept of an operational work management system:

Work Item = A work item that needs an answer / resolution that could be made up of many work tasks and can be tracked through it’s life time with execution steps/ actions, results captured until resolution, a work item can be passed between multiple users, with a clear owner.

The seven aspects are:

• Business Requirements: Capturing the work items needed for the business, often product, regulative, and efficiency.
• Emergent Work: This is the new one today captured in note pads, MS excel, etc but is where events/ alarms on the plant need follow up, and resolution, so a work item is created. Having a common system to capture the items from the DCS, Assets, Quality, Maintenance, Operational Planning etc. areas of the plant today.
• Consistent Work Practice: The ability to apply a proven work practice to a work item or work task, so that experience of the worker is less relevant as they have a process to follow, providing a consistent execution which can be monitored and improved over time.
• Work Planning: This is a key step where business work, emergent work and outstanding work are brought together into one place that we can review priorities, and associated materials, resources needed to successfully execute the work item. This activity of a planning will avoid people doing unplanned work, or starting work and not having resources. Providing a plan that can be passed to a team leader who allocates work tasks to the different members of his team.
• Work Execution: The ability for work items to pass to team members no matter what device or location. Capturing updates in real-time, changes in priorities, and immediate access to experience. The ability to collaborate with other team members, with different team members maybe executing different work tasks of a work item. Work items are not dropped or lost, or stalled, as visibility of work items is clear and common across the plant.
• Performance Measurement: Capturing the performance of execution of work items across the different locations, and teams, so that real-time understanding of work item status.
• Performance Improvement: The ability to see reports, dashboard of how long items take, where they get stalled(take to long or stop), and edit the proven work procedure and tune it to improve the execution. This is an ongoing process that a graphical workflow capability for process capture is key.

The different aspects are key to an effective Operational Work system, and the technology is now available, over the next few years this integrated work management system will be core to an operational management system spanning the different applications in level 3, the different teams, roles, and locations.   

Work as we may not know it “Comments on the Future of Work and Employment “

Last week I was in California a number of people commented on my blog in January on 2020, and landscape, and I had to explain points. Is it the    future I believe it is becoming real in many parts of the world today especially the likes of China and South Africa where educated Gen X and Baby Boomers are in shortage, so Gen Y is stepping up into more prominent roles in the workforce. On the way across on the plane I was reviewing Morris Miselowski’s blogs, his specialty is future –vision since 1981. He had a good blog which would expand on many of these workforce

This is an extract from this Morris Miselowski’s Future of Work and Employment

“The good news is that there will be employment way into the future, there has to be. Things will always need to be done, built, sold, fixed, transported and accounted for and always will.

The other wonderful, or perhaps disconcerting news, depending on whether you’re a half full or half empty kind of person, is that we’re not going to need furriers, blacksmiths or elevator operators much anymore.

Now I know that’s kind of obvious, but these professions were great honorable and inspiring jobs in their day, using cutting edge technology and machinery to fulfill a society’s dreams and demands.

Tomorrow’s employment space, made up of a dwindling baby boomer cohort and increasing X,Y,Z and A generations will have 6 careers and 14 jobs. They will work towards the completion of tasks and project, not time allocation; in industries we cannot yet name, nor fathom, using skills that today are unimaginable.

By 2025, 60% of us will be working digitally and remotely, not tethered to a fixed workspace, but rather in a time and place that best suits the work and the people involved.

Some of us will work as intraprenuers, inspiring our host company’s internally. Others will work as solopreneurs shaping their own destiny and pioneering new paths forward.

Many of us will be working collaboratively co-creating locally, nationally and globally in virtual tribes, connected by a trillion digital things that bestow on us constant contact with, insight to and manipulation of, our physical and digital worlds.

Global unemployment will remain high as over the next three decades we add two billion people to our planet.

Despite this it will remain difficult for employers to find talented employees, as we move through a tectonic shift of inventing and reskilling ourselves to reshape and repurpose existing businesses and professions, as well as forging new horizon industries, practices, business paradigms, ethics and professions.

Education and training will remain a constant to grease this transformation of knowledge, the internet will continue to help to spread this information, but with the overwhelming mountains of data we’re drowning in, businesses and individuals will soon value “wisdom” more highly than gold and oil and professions and industry’s will rise to mine these riches.

Our most prized vocational possession will be our ability to span the duality of working simultaneously in a physical and digital world.

Tomorrow’s work landscape will also see the increasing use of robots, virtualization, telecommuting and 3D printing further blurring the intersection of human and machine and igniting the question of whether human or machine is best-fit for the task at hand and does it matter?

Standing still is no longer a viable option.

Every job, every profession, every human activity is currently being redefined. Those that are destined to succeed are now standing firm-footed on the precipice of change eagerly scanning their horizon searching for tomorrow’s possibilities and necessities.”

Food for thought as we look at the “Industrial Operations “ evolution that is happening, the debate that it could be a revolution, as the time span is much shorted than the traditional transitions in the industrial market.

Operational Advantage will accelerate “Managed Services” Cloud adoption in the Industrial Sector!!!!

For the last couple of weeks, I seem to have ended up in a whirlpool of activity and interest around the cloud in the industrial landscape, not just from within Invensys, but also in the customer community. A world away from a year ago when it was hard to strike up a conversation of any reality around cloud in the industrial landscape. So I called a few people in the field and people who had approached us, or our partners and in a discovery mode as to what is driving them and why now?

There is a lot of speculation on why and who will adopt cloud technologies, this discussion will focus on historian/ process data in a managed service which is certainly one of the initial adoption areas in the industrial landscape, but certainly just one possibilities in the industrial landscape. Looking at the initial adopters of Cloud there will different reasons based upon the size of the organizations.

Early adoption of managed services will be the small business that do not have limited IT resources, who are also having to grapple with the changing consumer of the market, who need access to industrial information traditionally only for the control rooms.

Speaking with one company in the water industry, they have had SCADA systems years, with the data stored and available for analysis within a small community of people with access to this SCADA system. The changing market is requiring that this data be available for a larger community of people whom most are not situated at the plant, and in some cases are not even apart of the company. They also concerned that do not know how big this community will grow, and locations, and do not want dilute their core business focus of water management in building solutions. They not looking for a “cloud” solution they looking for a “Managed Solution” owned and executed by experts focused on these information systems. The interview drew for business jobs/ objectives they want and some clear associated desired outcomes.

Speed to value solution with minimal risk was high up on the list, they did not want wait around for solutions, they believe that the functionality must already exist and why re engineer  vs evolve from existing solutions. Key in this requirement was the need not drain vital internal resources in capital, or people.

Also, high on the list was increased availability, and removal of the “never ending circle of upgrades” this is for hardware and software, the resources needed, and most of all the loss in availability. By going external experts will manage this with the correct hardware and software capacity to maintain a higher availability.

Metering of costs became a topic it was not the reduction in cost, but the metering of cost that can increase as more value or capacity used, but also the ability to understand where the capacity is being used, by what departments or customers so the charges will be allocated to them directly. Instead of going through the endless Capex cycles for doing projects especially in the semi public sector.

Lastly it was scalability, the elasticity to change capacity not bigger but also smaller, to changed geographical consumption. They explained that new community is expending, the roles are changing, locations, but they have also seen contraction and then expansion again, this is hard to deal with in a internal project. Managed services will be able to deal with this change and cost will vary accordingly.

For large customers with IT departments many of challenges and drivers are the same but on a different scale, also the cloud also presents the opportunity commoditize the traditional data centers which are costly to maintain. The adoption in these bigger industries will less aggressive as they look at Private Cloud (not a long way from the old main frames), but even here there is a significant mind shift in the last 6 months.

Certainly on the small plants, sites there should be a significant debate as to why put “a server” on site for the company to maintain, when the common infrastructure is expanding so rapidly that off loading this unknown  to a “managed service” which can absorb the variability by spreading risk and capability over multiple customers. Especially when “managed services” will provide significant agility, operational flexibility and expandability at speed. As I stated a couple of weeks ago, "Managed Services" and "cloud computing" will enable a new dimension for the industrial architecture, the next significant leap through scalability, expertise capacity and cost, lifting it from the traditional architectures. The question is how far is the future again do not think it is years, think months. Especially as company leaders shift from thinking “managed services” as possible cost saving to delivering significant operational advantage.