Written by Gareth Chamberlain

Throughout my life I have seen huge changes in the way IT has moved in the commercial sector. From multiple standalone servers taking up huge spaces and needing dedicated employees to look after the well-being of each one, to today where all the servers are combined in to a single physical piece with hosted virtualised servers on the physical platform.

I’m also lucky enough to be witnessing the same changing shift within the industrial sector. Engineers who have only been used to dealing with serial devices are now being asked to dive into the world of IT with Ethernet, Wireless and IT network protocols, with projects that demand real time data back to a central server.

Phoenix Contact has been asked on many occasions within 2017 on how we can help companies achieve these goals of modernisation into the digital realm. With Industry 4.0, this means that demands and goals could be very different from site to site or even each application. This poses the issue of what protocols to use or products to choose from.

Luckily we are able to help you in many situations, from wireless communication to streamlining your Ethernet traffic, to help stop your network getting flooded with multicast broadcasts. But also bringing your legacy serial devices on to your Ethernet network so it can be seen companywide or worldwide.

But with all these systems going online and your data transmitted over long distances we always need to talk about Cyber Security. With new recent issues hitting Intel and ARM processors it shows that pretty much anything can be a target of malicious code.

We would love to know how we can help you in making your network work for you. Not only that but give you tools to give you access data into your process.

Gareth Chamberlain

Technical Support
Network and Cyber Security Specialist
Phoenix Contact Ltd

You can contact Gareth on the below:

Call: 07946757375

Email:  gchamberlain@phoenixcontact.com

Twitter: @phoenix_cyberUK