What VPN’s?

One of the big businesses on the internet are VPN (Virtual Private Network) services, but the ones you normally see advertised (Privacy VPN’s) are not what I want to write about today. The VPN services I want to write about are Remote access VPN’s, as per the name the purpose of these VPN services are to securely access remote device and networks. These can be needed in lots of different situations from OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturer) needing to support a machine on the other side of the country or a utility provider with hundreds of individual sites, normally these sites will have a little cellular router or on the odd occasion the site will have a local office network where the IT team will want to manage access.

NOTE:When I wrote this post I worked for an Emerson distributor, while this makes me more familiar with the Emerson offering this is my personal blog and thus these are my own thoughts and not my employers. But I am limited in what I can talk about with regards to Emerson due to restrictions imposed on me.

One thing that has gotten me really excited about the Industrial Automation space in the last couple of years is the new generation of PLC’s that are expanding what we can do with PLC’s. So comparing to previous generations a PLC was a standalone deterministic controller that looked after it’s own process, then technology progressed and more complex systems meant we now have PLC’s that are capable of using multiple communication protocols to interface with SCADA and work with other controllers. Now PLCs (some vendors like to call these PAC (Programmable Automation Controllers) but they are still PLCs) are bringing in more complex communication protocols and extending their scope to do more, the purpose of this is to collect more data and move this data to where it can be analysed, processed and used to improve decision making and to eventually automate those decisions to increase productivity and effectiveness.