Driving Value with Real-Time, Secure Data Integration

Industrial organizations today face a multitude of challenges, from meeting evolving regulatory requirements to managing assets across dispersed locations and adhering to cybersecurity standards. Access to immediate, accurate, and secure data from systems like SCADA, PLC, and MES is essential to overcoming these complexities. Traditional data management methods, often reliant on batch processing, introduce latency, data silos, complex transformations and potential security vulnerabilities. The integration of Celebal Technologies’ OT Liberator with Microsoft Azure IoT Operations offers secure, real-time data flows that enhance operational efficiency, resilience, and compliance.

With OT Liberator and Azure IoT Operations, organizations benefit from multi-layered security, ensuring data integrity across the enterprise. Built-in security features, including detection and obfuscation of sensitive data at the edge, help safeguard critical information. Sensitive data is filtered and secured before cloud transmission, reducing potential risks and strengthening regulatory compliance.

Advancing OT and IT Convergence for a Seamless, Resilient Data Foundation

The integration of Celebal Technologies’ OT Liberator and Azure IoT Operations provides a powerful foundation tailored to the demands of industrial environments, focusing on secure, efficient, and resilient data handling:

• Efficient Meta-data Synchronization and Sensitive Data Handling: Celebal Technologies’ OT Liberator synchronizes metadata from OT sources like PI Historians and SCADA systems, creating seamless access to high-quality, consistent data across the organization. Added security features, such as detection, obfuscation, and removal of sensitive data, safeguard critical information. Sensitive data is secured at the edge before cloud transmission, establishing a protected pipeline from source to cloud.
• Streaming Data for Immediate Insights: Traditional data-batching approaches capture data in intervals, causing delays and limiting immediate insights. By contrast, streaming data—enabled by OT Liberator and Azure IoT Operations—provides near-instantaneous data availability, allowing organizations to respond proactively to live data rather than relying on delayed batch data. Real-time streaming improves decision-making, speeds response times, and supports dynamic process adjustments, essential for industries that rely on immediate insights for safe and efficient operations.
• Scalable Data Schemas: With the capability to manage millions of real-time data points, OT Liberator and Azure IoT Operations support scaling within Azure’s infrastructure to meet the demands of data-intensive industrial environments. Azure IoT’s edge capabilities further unlock low-latency insights at the source, reducing response times and enhancing operational accuracy.
• Resilience and Data Integrity: This solution handles typical OT challenges like late-arriving data, data backfill, and outages, ensuring resilience and data quality despite disruptions. This approach allows for seamless data synchronization, including capturing and syncing data changes in historical archives without impacting source performance.
• Automated Security and Performance Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of source systems ensures optimized performance, with automatic adjustments that prevent overloads, protecting system stability even under high data demands. This proactive monitoring is crucial for uninterrupted performance, especially in environments where large data volumes and high-frequency data requests are standard.

Powering Predictive Analytics and Operational AI with Azure IoT Operations

With data unlocked by Celebal Technologies’ OT Liberator, Microsoft Azure IoT Operations provides a unified, secure platform that enables AI-powered insights and supports real-time, data-driven decision-making:

• Democratized, Secure Data Access: By providing role-based access to real-time data, Azure IoT Operations creates secure, enterprise-wide accessibility aligned with cybersecurity standards. Enabled by OT Liberator, Azure IoT eliminates data silos, ensuring decision-makers have timely access to accurate information, accelerating digital transformation, and establishing a reliable single source of truth.
• Enhanced Edge and Cloud Integration for Real-Time Processing: Leveraging advanced edge capabilities, Azure IoT Operations minimizes latency by processing data close to the source. Data unlocked by OT Liberator feeds directly into these edge functions, significantly reducing dependency on constant cloud resources. This hybrid edge-cloud approach optimizes efficiency and allows organizations to adapt to operational changes with immediate insights.
• Comprehensive Security and Compliance: Azure IoT Operations provides a multi-layered security framework, and OT Liberator’s sensitive data handling features ensure compliance with cybersecurity standards. Through role-based access, network monitoring, and continuous oversight, Azure IoT Operations enables a secure data pipeline from edge to cloud.
• AI-Enhanced Analytics for Proactive Management: Azure AI services, combined with the real-time data from OT Liberator, enable predictive maintenance, risk management, and continuous process optimization. Immediate data access supports dynamic response to issues, enhancing operational efficiency and reducing downtime.

Case Study: Transforming Data Management for a Global Energy Leader

A recent deployment of Celebal Technologies’ OT Liberator with Microsoft Azure IoT Operations for a global energy leader illustrates the power of this combined solution. Running a distributed enterprise PI System with over 700,000 real-time data points, the company achieved secure data streaming to the cloud within hours, leveraging the plug-and-play deployment of OT Liberator and Azure IoT Operations. This rapid setup enabled real-time data availability, seamless metadata synchronization, and secure data handling, including syncing changes in the historical archive without affecting the performance of the source system.

Business Benefits:

• Immediate Access to Real-Time Data: By moving from batch processing to real-time data streaming, the company gained instant access to operational insights, enabling proactive, data-driven decision-making without delays.
• Enhanced Advanced Analytics: Real-time data enabled the company to implement predictive analytics that optimize asset performance, stabilize processes, and reduce production costs while improving operational safety.
• Improved Data Consistency and Operational Resilience: With seamless data synchronization, including automated backfills and management of late-arriving data, OT Liberator ensured data integrity. Changes in the archive were synced without disruptions, offering consistent, reliable data for accurate analysis.
• Reduced Total Cost of Ownership: By enabling secure, direct streaming of data to the cloud, the company reduced support and maintenance costs, achieving a faster return on investment. Within a month, the solution was fully operational, demonstrating the value of quick, secure deployment for industrial operations.

Transformative Advantages Over Traditional Data-Batching Approaches

Batch processing gathers data at intervals, causing potential delays and security concerns, especially in multi-system environments. The combination of Celebal Technologies’ OT Liberator and Azure IoT Operations provides a secure, real-time alternative with substantial advantages:

• Reduced Latency and Enhanced Security: Direct, secure data streaming to the cloud enables sub-second data availability, fostering proactive management while safeguarding sensitive information through edge-level detection and obfuscation.
• Real-Time Analytics with Edge Processing: By leveraging Azure IoT’s edge capabilities, OT Liberator enables secure, real-time data analysis close to the source, reducing latency and providing timely insights for agile decision-making.
• Scalability and Operational Resilience: The solution’s secure scalability within Azure’s infrastructure meets the data needs of large OT systems, maintaining data quality and integrity, even in complex environments with older systems.
• Automated System Performance Protection: Continuous monitoring of source systems by OT Liberator prevents system overloads, ensuring smooth operations, even with high data volumes and frequent data requests. This automation is vital in high-demand settings, maintaining uninterrupted system stability and data flow.

Shaping the Future of Industrial Data Management

The combined capabilities of Celebal Technologies’ OT Liberator and Microsoft Azure IoT Operations establish a new standard for secure, efficient data connectivity in industrial environments. Together, they support real-time data integration, operational resilience, and AI-driven insights, meeting the demands of modern industry for productivity, safety, and regulatory compliance.

"Celebal Technologies’ integration with Azure IoT Operations bridges operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT). This synergy enables real-time, secure data flows, empowering manufacturing, energy, and utilities to optimize operations with instant insights. Our secure, multi-layered architecture supports data integrity and resilience, enhancing productivity, safety, and compliance. " – Dayan Rodriguez, Corporate Vice President, Manufacturing & Mobility at Microsoft

This collaboration empowers organizations to pursue digital transformation goals confidently, unlocking operational data to drive informed decisions, productivity gains, and process optimization. By securely bridging OT and IT, Celebal Technologies OT Liberator and Azure IoT Operations enable organizations to navigate Industry 4.0 challenges, establishing a resilient, secure foundation for future innovation and positioning companies for a data-driven industrial future.