The question is whether you can not afford to invest in OT monitoring, writes Daniel Sukowski, Global Business Development Industry & IIOT, Paessler
Scenes of confusion and frustration are increasingly common in modern manufacturing environments. Production managers often grapple with unexplained shutdowns, with IT teams often attributing the issues to programmable logic controllers (PLCs) while operations staff suspect network faults.
As IT systems and operational technology (OT) become more interconnected on the factory floor, this kind of finger-pointing highlights a deeper issue: the absence of unified visibility. This lack of clarity creates a complex environment where costly downtime and unresolved problems can quickly escalate.
Why traditional IT tools fall short
Industrial environments today are a far cry from what they were just a few years ago. The convergence of IT and OT has created a new set of challenges, and most traditional IT monitoring tools simply aren’t up to the task. They struggle to interpret industrial protocols like Modbus or OPC UA, leaving critical gaps in visibility.
When a PLC communicates with a human-machine interface (HMI), for example, conventional IT tools are often blind to what’s actually happening. This lack of insight exposes production lines to unexpected outages and security vulnerabilities, problems that can cost thousands of pounds per minute.
The cost of downtime
The financial impact of downtime in manufacturing is staggering. According to a Siemens study, the average cost of downtime exceeds €10,000 per hour, with some sectors facing even higher losses. The same study found that Fortune Global 500 companies lose an average of 11% of their annual revenue to unplanned downtime, amounting to a jaw-dropping €1.5 trillion each year. What’s even more alarming is that these costs have soared by more than 300% in certain industries over the past few years, far outpacing inflation.
Yet, much of this downtime is preventable. The right monitoring systems can identify issues before they escalate, enabling teams to take action before operations grind to a halt. The challenge lies in monitoring environments where IT and OT have merged, creating hybrid networks that are difficult to oversee with legacy tools.
The challenges of IT/OT convergence
Historically, OT systems such as PLCs, SCADA, and industrial control systems operated in isolation, protected by air-gapped security. But today’s factories require these systems to connect with enterprise networks, enabling real-time analytics and remote monitoring. This integration brings significant benefits, including improved efficiency and data-driven decision-making. However, it also introduces new risks and complexities, particularly when it comes to monitoring and security.
Industrial protocols like Modbus TCP, MQTT, and OPC UA are fundamentally different from standard IT protocols. Many IT teams have discovered, often the hard way, that their usual monitoring solutions are ill-equipped for the factory floor. They struggle to make sense of the traffic between devices like Siemens S7 PLCs and HMIs communicating over Profinet. This disconnect can leave critical systems unmonitored and vulnerable.
Real-world results: downtime reduction and cost savings
This is where unified monitoring platforms, such as Paessler PRTG, come into play. Designed to bridge the gap between IT and OT, PRTG provides a single pane of glass for monitoring both environments. It offers native support for industrial protocols, allowing teams to track everything from field devices to enterprise IT systems without juggling multiple tools or missing key correlations.
The benefits of unified monitoring are not just theoretical. Consider the case of an automotive parts manufacturer that implemented PRTG to oversee its CNC machines, PLCs, and industrial Ethernet switches. Before deploying the system, maintenance teams often only discovered problems after equipment had already failed. With real-time monitoring in place, they were able to detect and address issues before they caused disruptions. The result was a 38% reduction in unplanned downtime, translating to annual savings of more than €250,000. The investment paid for itself within just three months.
Another example is Dätwyler, a company with decades of experience in cable manufacturing. For Dätwyler, machine stoppages have a direct financial impact. By adopting a unified monitoring approach across both IT and OT, they were able to consolidate their systems, identify issues more quickly, and respond with better information. This holistic view enabled them to correlate problems across domains, improving both uptime and operational efficiency.
Cybersecurity: protecting the modern factory
Beyond operational benefits, OT monitoring is now a cornerstone of cybersecurity. As industrial systems become more connected, they are increasingly exposed to cyber threats. Unlike IT breaches, which typically threaten data, OT breaches can have physical consequences, including equipment damage and safety risks. Unified monitoring platforms help mitigate these risks by providing network-wide visibility, detecting unusual traffic patterns, and identifying unauthorised devices or communications that may signal a security incident.
A business imperative
What sets modern OT monitoring solutions apart is their ability to provide unified visibility, protocol-native support, and customisable dashboards tailored to the needs of both operations teams and executive leadership. Intelligent alerting ensures that the right people are notified the moment an issue arises, while historical data analysis helps identify trends and prevent future incidents.
The bottom line is clear: OT monitoring is no longer a luxury or an afterthought, it’s a business imperative. With the costs of downtime and cyber threats rising, and the operational advantages of unified monitoring too significant to ignore, organisations must act now to gain control of their industrial networks. The question is no longer whether you can afford to invest in OT monitoring, but whether you can afford not to.
Daniel Sukowski is the Global Business Development Manager – IIoT & Data Centers EMEA at Paessler. In this role, he leads strategy and outreach to industrial customers, particularly in IIoT and OT/IT integration. He frequently authors thought leadership articles and speaks at industry events on topics including condition monitoring and automated warehouse oversight and IT/OT convergence and cybersecurity best practices in industrial networks.
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