The OT Crowd

technology, education · EN

Break room talk, not a briefing. Proprietary automation economics are hitting a wall. Closed control systems lock plants into one vendor's roadmap, pricing, and upgrade cycle, and every modernization turns into a rip-and-replace bet. Open Process Automation (OPA) changes the math. It decouples hardware, software, and lifecycles so plants can upgrade piece by piece, mix vendors, and own their architecture. The OT Crowd digs into what that means for the plant floor, the budget, and everyone who builds, sells, and runs these systems. Jarie asks the questions you're thinking. David and Andrew tell you what's really going on. David is the OT veteran who has seen the field cycles, the vendor lock-in, and the migration that almost went sideways. Andrew co-chaired the Open Process Automation Forum's Technical Working Group and came up on the I/O vendor side, so he knows how O-PAS gets written (and argued over) and what it takes to ship into an open stack. Each episode brin