ABSTRACT
Legacy approaches to technology choices, solution design and procurement within the telecommunications industry are now under serious challenge by the reality that - for those organisations with mission critical operations - there is no ‘one size fits all’ network. From a network engineering and planning perspective this means an acknowledgement of the discrete differences between:
• Standard enterprise-grade Information Technology (IT) networking to support general corporate activity; and • Customised industrial-grade Operations Technology (OT) underpinning the requirements of mission-critical core business.
This reality is now widely recognised in industries such as mining, energy and oil and gas where there is an increasing reliance on automation and remote operations to deliver efficiency and productivity dividends to shareholders. Customers in these industries are now designing and purchasing solutions from a mix of network and technology choices based on specific OT use cases and not broader, generic corporate IT requirements.
It appears that tactical – or ‘special’ – capability for military use cases warrant a similar approach.
OT is defined by dedicated, mission critical traffic flows to – or within – a small number of core destinations often supported by dedicated local access technologies. A general characteristic of OT is that it can exist outside of standard IT control and management practices.
Our approach is to adopt non-proprietary and agnostic views on the types of access technologies and applications that may best address nominated OT use cases supported by a sovereign, secure, reliable and efficient core network.
Networking in general – with massive capacity increases in fibre, LEO and private 5G networks in particular – are now evolving at a rate that can match the emerging OT applications and functionality deployed by customers.
BIOGRAPHY
Phil is a telecommunications technologist, with 40 years’ experience in the design and delivery of telco equipment, systems and large-scale infrastructure projects. Phil is a foundation member of Vocus’ Government and Strategic Projects team and has been with the business for 20 years (formerly Nextgen).
As Head of Strategic Networks and previously CTO of Nextgen, Phil has been instrumental in establishing Vocus as a leader in secure networks and played a key role in the building and expanding of Vocus’ 35,000km fibre optic network. This has included key projects such as Vocus’ Australia Singapore Cable and North-West Cable System, as well as the Coral Sea Cable System for the Australian Government.
Phil holds a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Melbourne.