The complexity of operating manufacturing and production facilities continues to grow. Data is abundant but often siloed in many different applications. The need to drive improvements in safety, efficiency, quality and reliability often requires data from these many divergent sources.

In this Emerson Automation Experts podcast, Hamza Malik shares a solution to these silos of data, to bring them together to turn data into actionable information in order to drive performance improvements.

Give the podcast a listen and visit the Inmation—The Industrial Data Fabric section for more information on how you can build a foundation to optimize operations across your enterprise.

Transcript
Jim: Hi, everyone. I'm Jim Cahill with another Emerson Automation Experts podcast. For too long, companies have faced an ever-evolving challenge trying to unlock the value trapped within their operational technology or OT data. The variety and volume of data sources is growing and it was time for a solution that ties them together whilst keeping the total cost of ownership low. OT benefits and IT have a solution in their estate that's easy to manage.

I'm joined today by Hamza Malik to discuss ways to untrap this OT data with the Inmation application and drive performance improvements. Welcome, Hamza.

Hamza: Thank you, Jim. Happy to be here.

Jim: Well, it's great having you here to share some of your expertise with our listeners. So, let's dive right in and begin by asking you what exactly is Inmation?

Hamza: That's a very pertinent question to begin with. For a lot of our listeners, this is more than likely to be the first time they're going to hear about Inmation. So, I tried very hard to summarize what Inmation is in one sentence, but I ended up with two. So, here it goes. Inmation is essentially a secure, scalable OT data platform, purpose-built for the ever-increasing variety and volume of data that our customers around the world, regardless of industry, are collecting. Within an architectural perspective, it bridges systems from the field all the way to the cloud and all the way back.

Jim: Well, that gives it a good perspective, I think, of kind of where it fits for our customers. So, can you share some background on why it was created?

Hamza: Sure can. So, the folks that developed the Inmation platform, the Inmation OT data platform, were working within a space where connectivity between different systems was their bread and butter. And about, I'd say, 12 years ago, they realized that, again, because of the variety and volume of data that customers are collecting and that there is trapped value within all of this data that customers are collecting, there is actually no purpose-built system that is easy to deploy, has a relatively low total cost of ownership, can drive a relatively quick return on investment. And from a connectivity platform, there is no single product that allows you to do this.

So, essentially, Inmation was created to be the single product that this company makes so that it can handle the demands of a multitude of data-hungry applications within our customers' organizations without the need to address the system and interface integration topic ever again. We have customers that we've been working with for decades. Teams change, priorities change, the amount of funding and resources available to our customers change. When these things happen, over the years, the architectural stack that our customers end up with can appear like a spaghetti, like a spaghetti diagram, which I think is a term a lot of our IT and OT customers will resonate with.

Connectivity, interfacing, cybersecurity challenges,