Operational technology (OT) is a mission-critical function that must increasingly respond to industry changes. The traditional OT model distributed OT responsibilities across operating areas, embedding these responsibilities within engineering functions. While this model provided OT responsiveness to operating areas, several complications have been revealed that reduce its effectiveness in today’s changing environment:

We’ve talked for decades about disruption in the electric and gas industries. We’ve faced “unprecedented challenges,” existential threats, fundamental policy changes, exponential technology growth, extreme weather events, and a changing mix of customer preferences and usage patterns. The vertically integrated electric utility framework of the 1970s has been restructured, fragmented, and recast along asset class boundaries (generation, transmission, etc.), each with different business models, operating frameworks, ownership types, and regulatory oversight. Disruptive threats experienced over the past 50 years have become mainstream and are part of our ongoing dialogue. Is today any different? Given the nature and speed by which major disruptors, such as the clean energy transition, are impacting our industry, it might be.