Belden recently released findings from its recent industry survey designed to determine companies' confidence in their current industrial network infrastructures.
Top findings, reported from more than 100 engineering, operations and IT professionals, reveal:
- Upgrades are needed within the next three years. 74.8% of respondents believe their infrastructure could use some modifications, if not major investments, to meet current and future operations and business goals.
- Today, industrial Ethernet is most firmly rooted in initiatives to drive control and automation (86.1 percent) and data acquisition (67.3 percent).
- Personnel safety and physical security are by far the two least used areas for industrial Ethernet (13.9% and 11.9% respectively). Yet overall security, including physical, was a top concern when respondents were asked about their current industrial network infrastructure, second only to reliability.
"In harsh conditions and running mission-critical operations, engineers just need their communications network infrastructure to work – period. Of course, every sector has advanced technologies for collaboration and improving efficiency on their strategic roadmap. The simple fact is that essential infrastructure has to keep pace," said Brian Oulton, director of global vertical marketing at Belden. "The progress that everyone aspires to is simply impossible if the foundational system is inadequate."
Plant consolidation and a migration to "smart" facilities – capable of seamless information sharing across the enterprise – is a common catalyst for designing a cohesive, end-to-end industrial Ethernet infrastructure. Security is another driver, especially in light of the growing threat of industrial-specific cyber-attacks like Stuxnet and Flame.
Download the report (registration required).