Beyond Remote Access

Why is Remote Access a topic worth thinking about?

"Industrial remote access" describes the use of technology to connect and communicate with industrial systems and equipment that are situated in distant or inaccessible areas. It enables authorized individuals, such as technicians, engineers, or operators, to securely connect to industrial equipment, machinery, or control systems from a centralized or distant location.

Be it an OEM (original equipment manufacturer), a customer with an installed base, or a system integrator, secure remote access is the need of the hour for continued operations. The goals of secure industrial remote access are to increase operational effectiveness, facilitate proactive maintenance and problem-solving, ensure secure communication, promote collaboration, and adhere to industry laws while optimizing costs. This is an extremely important operating mechanism for firms in the present environment of hybrid work from anywhere models. Connecting to systems is becoming simpler thanks to technological developments in networking, connectivity, and security. We are finally moving beyond the traditional silos of IT (information technology) and OT (operational technology).

But as it stands today in most customer scenarios, the remote access ecosystem has several problems, including a fragmented ecosystem, a lack of standard tools and software, network and security restrictions, user management and session management, and others. There is an urgent need to think beyond the realm of remote access - towards a secure platform-based approach in which multiple stakeholders provide access to their data of interest. A platform built on the principles of zero trust, ease of deployment and positive user experience.

How should the future Remote Access landscape look like?

Future ready cloud platform

• With multi-hyperscaler support, the solution enables future business models and use cases
• Secure and scalable in both horizontal and vertical hierarchy with conformance to standards
• Real-time control tower for proactive maintenance

Ease of access

• Centrally managed single secure user sign-on for fleets across customer ecosystem
• Zero touch service deployment at edge and gateway
• Integration with support system and third-party supplier ecosystems and platforms

Secure platform for proactive support

• Single-outbound connection and site-to-site VPN tunneling
• Minimal/ Zero dependency on customer ecosystem (Network and IT) 
• Built in audit logging, observability (MELT) and intrusion detection with endpoint security

How can you embark on a journey beyond remote access?

Challenges today:

• Understanding and clustering of current challenges and potential requirements for future state remote access
• Definition of a clear problem statement as the basis for the next phase 

Benefits short-term:

• Reduce MTTR with centric remote access abstracting complexities for end users
• Reduce TCO to ensure scalable infrastructure for stakeholders
• Reduce cybersecurity risk to minimize attack surface

Benefits long-term:

• Spare part management for automatic ordering and predictive maintenance
• Brokerage of free machine capacities for reuse for internal teams
• Machine feature management which does not cause any service disruption
• Individual service planning enables scheduling services tailored to customer
• Machine breakdown insurance for machines’ uptimes/ outputs 

For more information on the state of Remote Access, download the whitepaper here.

If you think a remote access transformation is in your future, get in touch with us.