Super conductor

As office and industrial Ethernet technologies converge, the IT manager and the industrial engineer may soon be sharing the same skill sets to control the networking of both office pc’s emails and the production shop floor’s automated machinery. After all, a robot arm can now be connected to industrial Ethernet using the same lan technology as used in offices and homes. In fact, the skills required to orchestrate office and industrial Ethernet technologies are analogous and, at the end of the day, the skill sets required are all about securing data. This level of security is normally achieved using standard firewalls and an off the shelf networking environment -- firmly the domain of the internal IT support role. However, this is gradually blending with the more specialised skill sets on the industrial automation side as the traditional IT department and shop floor production department have very similar problems with networks.