speaker-0: Hey everyone, and welcome to the first ever The OT crowd. And for those of you who love British comedy, you will probably figure out where we stole that from. ⁓ my name's Jarie Bolander. I'm the head of ⁓ marketing over at CPLANE And I am joined with two of my colleagues, David and Andrew. And the kind of weird thing about it is we all kind of started at the same time. So honestly, we've really never even worked with each other very much. So David, why don't you ⁓ give a quick little intro?

speaker-1: All right. Well, my name is David DeBari. ⁓ I am an old process control engineer. ⁓ I guess I would ⁓ say first thing I've been doing this about 39 years. Wow. I have a lot of plan experience. I've worked everything from contact engineer for instrumentation and controls all the way up through project manager and ⁓ and I was actually an RD team lead. So ⁓ I have built a lot of control systems. I've actually built twenty-one major ⁓ projects with control systems. ⁓ 10 were Greenfield, 11 were Brownfield conversions. These are not at a controller, add a channel things. These are some of them were rip and replace the entire IO room. my experience extends from ⁓ you know, I did utilities and manufacturing specialty chemical, I've done upstream, ⁓ off some offshore stuff, ⁓ a variety of of activities, everything ⁓ instrument, electrical, analyzers, you name it. I think ⁓ I've I've touched it. ⁓ I actually will give credit to my mentors and the people I worked with over the years. ⁓ they've allowed me to get to this point where I am ⁓ truly a multi useless engineer.

speaker-0: Multi air, you've ⁓ went to the dark side, right?

speaker-1: I can I don't know. I I can I know a lot about a number of things and I'm an expert in some and I'm ⁓ I'm a novice in others, but I I I don't get lost often, which is the credit to my my mentors. I'm trying to pay it for by the way. Awesome, yeah. At this stage in my career.

speaker-0: I went to the dark Absolutely. That's why we're doing the show too. And I think Andrew, you're like what, twenty-five, twenty-six? Like gotta be I think David's been doing it longer than you've been alive. Yes. How old are you? Thirty? Wow. I remember thirty-six. Yeah, no gray in the beard. So hey Andrew, yeah, tell us a little bit about what you've been up to.

speaker-2: Hey baby, I'm thirty six, so

speaker-1: Yes, fine.

speaker-2: Yeah, so I am a systems architect ⁓ for industrial control systems. ⁓ previously I've worked for an OEM that made ⁓ industrial electronics. So everything that would go into a control cabinet, but that includes automation. And ⁓ yeah, there I was really focused on ⁓ this concept of OPAS and what we can do to move the entire process industry forward. ⁓ 'cause for a long time it's been fixed on just a couple of vendors. And once you're with that vendor, you you're stuck with that vendor. ⁓ so the promise of OPAS is more open abil open systems. And yeah, that's that's kind of my focus. That's what I want to bring here. And

speaker-0: See where we go. yeah, awesome. Yeah, you're the eye candy of the group, I think. Yeah.

speaker-2: Yes so. ⁓

speaker-0: I'm just giving him a hard time. I have never even really I don't think I've met you in person since you live in Germany, so

speaker-2: Yeah, yeah, that's true. ⁓ I I think we met a couple of weeks ago or ⁓ a couple of months ago when I was in ⁓ San Mateo.

speaker-0: ⁓ okay. I might have been on vacation. I think you were there. Yeah, I forget. I mean, look, I'm a tall white guy with a beard. We all look the same. I get it. I believe me, you know. But what's interesting is you you bring up O OPAS, right? ⁓ OPA, which is open process automation, ⁓ which is something that the industry is now ⁓ starting to really ⁓ embrace, or it's at the I don't know where to be on the Gartner curve, but we're getting to the point where real systems exist in production. from major folks. ⁓ and one of the reasons why we wanted to do the show is, you know, our philosophy is as as Andrew mentioned, is, you know, look, open systems are the best way to go, right? And what's interesting is like my background, like I got no clue about this. Like industrial automation, I I'm clueless, right? I'm come from the semiconductor business originally. I was originally an engineer and then I and then I mentioned I went to the dark side of marketing, ⁓ which you know the mantra is welcome to marketing, two drink minimum, Adderall to the left, crying couch to the right. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, because we our 10 years usually don't last very long. ⁓ but what's what's fascinating about this whole thing is, you know, technology as time goes on, right? Innovation happens. I know David talks a lot about this. Like, look. The O from what I understand, and I don't want to get you guys' feedback, the OT side of the house, right? The operational technology side of the house has, as you mentioned, Andrew, been stagnant, I think, based solely on what we we would term proprietary or locked in quote unquote systems from some folks that will remain nameless until you know we have more coffee and want to bash them a little bit. But ⁓ the the issue has been like there's been no real innovation. Right? Like the the innovation sort of stopped. As in, but if you look at the IT side, information technology, SaaS, cloud, routers, like just name everything that is basically ubiquitous open standards, plug and play, USB, Bluetooth, the whole thing, right? Yeah, everything that the OT guys, right, on the other side of the fence, who funnily enough.

speaker-1: Everything we want.

speaker-0: OT and IT seem to bash each other's heads. It's almost like the Thunderdome, you know, two go in, one come out sometimes. ⁓ but I'm curious, you know, this this inaugural show, I'd I'd love to just talk about like where how because but the the other thing is both of you guys were on was it the open group, the standard, right? Yeah, in and so I think both of you still are.

speaker-1: Open process automation forum. Forum, right. Yeah, which is part of the open group.

speaker-0: Right, the open group. So y'all been doing this. Yeah, I mean, you've been doing this longer than I've even known about industrial automation. Not as long as, you know, well, actually, maybe as long as Andrew's been alive. But so so take us just through some of the history of this real quick. ⁓ because I know your former employer, which begins with an E, started this like 10, 15 years ago. So Dave, just real real quick some of the

speaker-1: Fourteen years ago.

speaker-0: historical aspects of it.

speaker-1: So I worked for a large manufacturing company in the oil and gas industry. And ⁓ about fourteen years ago I I met some very interesting peers who were trying to solve a problem with obsolescence with the the distributed control system. And through that process what we realized was pretty much the entire economic ⁓ argument in the automation world was sort of broken. ⁓ You know, everybody has their favorite brands and their and the things they know how to do. But we realize it's all specialized skills. There's very few standards used. There's very little interoperability, interchangeability. ⁓ and that cr that really creates a business problem. And so you so for several years we actually had ⁓ a lot of meetings and a lot of arguments with each other about what it ought to look like. And then are around ⁓ Well, about 11 years ago, we went and told the rest of the world what we were thinking. and that was the beginning of open process automation. ⁓ because we we couldn't do it just by ourselves. No, no end user or ⁓ single entity, vendor or otherwise in the marketplace could go change the world. It's not an easy task, anyways. And so we started what became the open process automation forum because we figured out we had a lot of people, not only other end users, but vendors that were very interested in the same problem. ⁓ obsolescence technology, insertion was needed. The fact that ⁓ the IT world had capabilities we only dreamed about. ⁓ we recognized that we had a we have a different ⁓ environment, you know, subtly different. ⁓ when you're in automation or process control, you're you're trying to control machinery and equipment. And there's always energy and chemistry and and hazards involved that that may not be present in a data center or a you know a more traditional IT system. But there are very similar business problems. And so why can't we use some of that technology? And then we s then we started the forum and that's been right at ten years. And ⁓ that's actually how we met Andrew because ⁓ as I was involved in the forum and and talking about how do we standardize this and which standards will we use, ⁓ Andrew became part of that as well. And ⁓ It's been a a really interesting ride and and now as you said, there are there is the ability to create a system that is much more what we would call open process automation than a ⁓ bespoke vendor, proprietary, locked in, locked down, whatever words you want to use. ⁓ the system that we dreamed about is actually available today. ⁓ is possible to build them and set them, put them together and So that's my background. I as I said, I I have been doing this for right at fourteen years, the last fourteen years of my career. And ⁓ I was very fortunate to to get involved in a pretty strategic R and D effort and and get to lead the technical team in that capacity.

speaker-0: Yeah. Must be must feel pretty good to see it all kinda.

speaker-1: It does see we we we've gotten to the point where there's ⁓ live systems, ⁓ commercial processes running ⁓ on this technology, this capability. ⁓ a lot of the things we thought we wanted and we projected that we could do are true. and now it's a matter of let's share the knowledge and information, ⁓ you know, enlighten and teach and share with our peers. ⁓ I think that's the the O T crowd's ⁓ mission is to help people understand what is possible ⁓ and why it's important.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. And to educate idiots like me. I'm sorry, people like me. I shouldn't say I'm an idiot.

speaker-1: No, it's it's all right. That's all right. Yeah. And to me it's it is sort of the we're getting to the point where it's no longer an idea or a a research project. It's actually it's real and it is doable. Now it becomes how do we we teach others and allow others to start seeing that benefit and value and and bring it to their own companies. Right. That's true.

speaker-0: So yeah, I mean that's great. So Andrew, you you were on what's it called? The technical working group? I ⁓ EWG, right? Yeah.

speaker-2: Yeah. So I was the co chair of the technical working group for a couple of years.

speaker-0: Cool. Yeah then that must have been like that must have been like watching paint dry.

speaker-1: It was a very good one. No, it was like herding cats. It was professional herding cats. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ yeah.

speaker-2: standards work though. There's some mix of that where it can be kind of dry because the standards work. But right at the same time, like Dave said, it's you're you're trying to juggle what the the demands of lots of different stakeholders. ⁓ so you're get trying to get the end users, you're trying to get the ⁓ manufacturers who have very different ways of seeing things and ⁓ getting them to come together on on which way it should go, which was best which way is best for everybody.

speaker-1: I was once told there's a Newton's law of the second law of engineering for every engineer is an equal and opposite engineer.

speaker-0: Yeah. That's a hundred percent true.

speaker-1: One of my mentors shared that one with me. ⁓ yeah.

speaker-0: There's another rule that we did in semiconductor engineering, because that's my background, building chips like Bluetooth, USB, DNA sequencing chips. We used to have a rule that if the engineer said it would take a three month, three months, we just multiplied by pi, and that's usually how long it would take. It usually worked out pretty well. Because fundamentally what's what's well, what was fun about being being an engineer for me back then, ⁓ because I'd been doing

speaker-2: That's actually probably a good guess.

speaker-1: Yes.

speaker-0: what tech and stuff for what thirty plus years. Has it been that long? Almost as long as Andrew's been alive, but not quite. ⁓ but what was interesting about all that was like you you talk about standards and building like how do we ⁓ like be able to work together and connect systems together in a standard way. So back in the day there there was something called Bluetooth. I'm sure you guys have heard of it. ⁓ I worked on Bluetooth one point ⁓ before it it I mean, it was a mess, right? So we were building a Bluetooth chips Bluetooth 1.0. We had folks on the standard. We also were building USB chips, which I'm sure you guys are familiar with. Everyone, USB three, blah, blah, blah. And what was interesting about that was there was the standards part, which you know, I think it was IEEE standard. I don't remember off the top of my head. And there was the Bluetooth Forum, etc. And they basically here is the spec of what you need to build. And then we are going to test it to the spec. And when we stamp it that says it's Bluetooth or USB, obviously now it's interchangeable. You can again to your point, like David, buy anything that says USB, plug it in, and it works. Now before that, as ever ⁓ some people know, I know David knows this, and I was just a wee lad ⁓ when this would happen. That was not the case. You used to have all these drivers and plugging it in. And is it a serial port and a UART? And you had to configure it. And and and what don't even get me started about wireless. Wireless was a disaster before Wi-Fi, as an example, was a standard. There were dozens of these. Or remember token ring before Ethernet, right? ⁓ I remember that too. Like even death. I mean, the amount of insanity of all of this, like, ⁓ our standards better. I mean,

speaker-1: Good old days.

speaker-0: Apple had that same thing with Lightning.

speaker-1: We were learning and progressing and that is the value of that history. But going back to it is not a good plan. And and they're not really the good old days. We call ⁓ the good old days because we forgot all the pain and suffering. But the reality is that ⁓ miserable. Yeah, well this bunch better now. Miserable. And that ⁓ yeah. The I remember buying the wrong mouse. Yeah. It's like, what do you mean it's got different connector? You know, what?

speaker-0: Can't even

speaker-1: And I gotta have a driver and ⁓ yeah. It's gotta come from a specific vendor to work. It's yeah.

speaker-0: Well that driver, right? Remember that? ⁓ god.

speaker-1: You buy it, you plug it in, happy days, which is kind of the you know, the thoughts we had and the the origin of where this all comes from is why don't we have more standardization? Why don't we have more interoperability or in in both software and in hardware? Right. why has everything got its own special plug ⁓ connector? Why can't a lot of people compare OpenStack? USB or USB or H DMI or you know

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: It's okay to have a few because you have you have needs, but to have everybody have their own different one. And potentially it's part of it's just to block people out.

speaker-0: ⁓ yeah. ⁓ yeah. ⁓

speaker-1: Which is the downside of that. And I get the competitive barriers to entry. ⁓ it's not valuable to the business. It's

speaker-0: But honestly. It's yeah anything proprietary. And this is like I learned this from the old wireless days, the old you know, serial port days. I mean, the old anything that is not something that others can build upon, then the competitive goes away and you don't get better. So those folks are like, ⁓ well, you know, we've got our moat and no one can touch us because it's our silo. Well, you're not getting any better. I guarantee it.

speaker-1: That that's what happened actually. Yeah, it's Automation used to be leaders in networking. The IT world did not have the kind of networking that we were doing in automation. ⁓ we were pushing processors and software in ways that ⁓ you know were were pretty pretty even with what IT could do. And then we just planted a flag somewhere, you know, probably around thirty years ago and IT kept Driving away, ⁓ accelerating away, by the way. And and that's the part we say, why don't we have the capabilities and tools and the you know, obviously we've got to make it, you know, sensitive to that operation world we live in, but in the safety aspects, but the technologies are there and and we know we know how to create systems that can use the technology and be safe in this automation use case. Yeah. And that's

speaker-0: Yeah. I remember I've been looking at some of the tools that you control engineering guys use. I'm not gonna name ⁓ I'm not gonna name ⁓ but I fired one up and I'm like, this looks like Windows nine ninety eight. I I'm not gonna say

speaker-2: I have an idea which one you're talking about.

speaker-1: And those are the partner. Those might be the good ones. Because there are some stuff that looks a lot like DOS.

speaker-0: Now I understand, you know.

speaker-1: ⁓ And and that's you know and and that's the real the real danger in this time period is gonna be that the the need for cybersecurity is much, much, much greater. ⁓ and we haven't really kept up. ⁓ the need for making this easy to use and easy to build has not really kept up. ⁓ the sad part is some of the practitioners are you know the the ones who Yeah, my mentors who were there in the very first computers in the process, they're gone. They're retired. a lot of the people who have lived through some of those development years are leaving. And it's a pretty difficult to to ask the new s new folks to learn grandpa's technology. ⁓ and that's you know, part of our our issue as well is but the in terms of you know what we what we wanna accomplish and what I think we can do with this ⁓ platform, the OT crowd, is to help people understand what is possible, what is real, what is safe, the the things that we've done, the things that, you know, Andrew and I have been part of as far as making sure standards are solid. And ⁓ there's some other aspects which we'll talk about in and I'm sure some future episodes of this. But the idea that this is not ⁓ magic, it's not something that's actually a lot of new invention. It's just repurpose what already exists. ⁓ we used to joke, you know, we wrote all these ideas down and nowhere in there do we say we were gonna beam anybody up to the control room. ⁓ this is all ideas that you can you can buy and use today in other worlds. Right. So why don't we bring it to the OT?

speaker-0: The OT crowd. Ha.

speaker-1: Huh. The O T crowd's gonna help bring it to the O Some understanding. Yeah. I think that's ⁓

speaker-0: What you came up with that idea? Well, that's that's actually a great ⁓ great place to leave this episode. So yeah, this is the OT crowd. ⁓ please ⁓ like and subscribe and all that once we get this stuff all squared away. ⁓ you'll be seeing a bunch of other episodes from us. We're gonna try to like really like break down what OPA is, some of the trends going on in industry, not only just the OT stuff on the engineering side, but you know, since I'm the marketing dweeb. Talk a little bit about, you know, what's going on in the marketplace and the ecosystem, because part of this we've always talked about there's the technology side, there's the business side, and then there's the ecosystem that ⁓ supports it. So until next time, we're the OT crowd and thanks for listening.