The business environment in the power industry is undergoing major changes, including the shift to green energy and net-zero sustainability goals. Merely improving either the IT domain or the OT domain is not sufficient to respond to these changes. Thus, IT/OT convergence, which transcends the boundaries of the two domains. Previously, the layer of control equipment and that of IT systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) were separated from each other.

Flexible IT technologies such as cloud computing and edge computing are used to store IT data and OT data in a data lake, making it possible to optimize plant operation tasks, which are difficult to handle by IT or OT control alone. This enables plants to automatically adapt to changes in the business environment. Even with IT/OT convergence, some problems are beyond the capability of an individual utility. The approach attracting attention is to create new business value through system of systems collaboration beyond corporate boundaries. Therefore, the application area of IT/OT convergence is expected to expand further.

Greenstar Technologies National Energy Operations Center delivering such business values and solutions as a collaborative service for the power industry in the USA. This dramatically changes the modus operandi of how utilities conduct business enabling digital transformation.