Posted by Bangalore: Siemens and Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) company have formed a key partnership focused on bridging the Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) spaces.
Under this partnership, both companies will leverage their complementing portfolios to support customers through interoperable integrated networks. Customers will gain benefits from Siemens’ expertise in integrated networks from factor floors to corporate offices along with Arubas’ wired and wireless LAN infrastructure.
Through this partnership, both Siemens and Aruba is addressing the new challenges that have evolved around the trends of Digitalization, Industrie 4.0 and Industrial IoT, where data and its security has become increasingly crucial as it traverse the boundary between IT and OT.
This is creating new gaps between the Industrial OT networks and the enterprise IT networks resulting in a major security concerns for large industries and organisations in terms of their manufacturing plants and facilities that are potential targets of cyberattacks.
By providing integrated networks with tested interoperability and documented in validated reference designs, the two companies aim to help customers with the integrated OT/IT systems can be installed rapidly with ease, operated more securely, and supported more efficiently.
This partnership, according to Klaus Helmrich, Member of the Management Board – Siemens AG is an important step to complement industrial networks offerings. “The cooperation between Siemens and Aruba is an important step to complement our industrial networks offering, which is one of the pillars of the Digital Enterprise, with the additional IT offering from Aruba. Customers will benefit from futureproof, integrated communication networks ensuring availability and security,” said Helmrich.
While Aruba’s President and Co-Founder Keerti Melkota said that this partnership is a result of three years joint efforts between the two companies which has been successful in addressing the OT-IT gaps.
“Working together for nearly three years, Siemens and Aruba have addressed the OT/IT divide thru technology integration, backed by validated reference designs. The resulting solutions are ideal for a variety of industrial applications, and are backed by both Siemens’ and Aruba’s support teams,” said Melkota.
Heineken, one of the biggest brewing companies in the world has deployed an integrated OT/IT solution from Aruba and Siemens for its HEINEKEN Nederland Supply Brewery’s-Hertogenbosch. “To run efficiently and stave off cybersecurity threats we need uniform visibility and security across our OT and IT. Working with Siemens and Aruba we have achieved our objective with a solution that went in very smoothly and has been highly reliable ever since,” said Henk van den Scheun, Manager Engineering.
The solutions include wired and wireless networking products and related software that can be implemented via several channels including the companies’ extensive partner networks with direct access to their engineering and support experts.
The solutions help ensure network security that spans both the IT and OT worlds; for example, Aruba’s 360 Secure Fabric for IT networks can be combined with Siemens’ “Defense in Depth” OT security concept. Since customers’ security needs vary, especially in older legacy deployments, Aruba and Siemens will also tailor security solutions to address specific customer requirements.