UTC Telecom & Technology 2019

Case Study: Achieving IT/OT Convergence Without Adding Complexity and Sacrificing Performance (Room 201A)

20 Jun 19
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Tracks: Converged Systems for Smarter Communities

Speaker(s): Paul Robertson, Senior Product Manager, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Inc. (SEL); Ron Beck, Senior Network Engineer, Central Lincoln People's Utility District; Kevin Huff, Manager, Grid Integration, Salt River Project

The goal sounds simple—converging utility IT and OT operations without complexity or sacrificing performance. But is it that easy? In this session, attendees will review a case study featuring Central Lincoln PUD and how they approached the challenge of migrating their network infrastructure to a packet-switched core and addressed their goal of converging IT and OT onto a single network. The presentation describes the requirements-based approach Central Lincoln used to evaluate different solutions and ultimately how they decided to choose a carrier-Ethernet-based solution. Additionally, this session will also feature a discussion on utility a telecom-systems operations maturity models with four key focus areas: capability, competency, availability, and capacity. The areas of capability and competency provide a foundation in maturity, whereas availability and capacity are more often considered after significant progress is made in the other areas.