Case Study: High-Availability IT for a UK Food & Beverage Manufacturer
Together with our Network Engineers, we design and configure secure-redundant network architectures to optimise your industrial communications, enabling your systems towards perfect IT & OT Convergence, IoT, and data capitalisation.
We are Digitalisation Consultants,
Network Integrators and IT Service Providers for the industrial sector across the UK & Europe.
Our technical expertise range across a variety of Operating Systems, Networks, and Databases. We are vendor-independent and offer our customers a comprehensive Digital Transformation approach with Industrial Networking & Cybersecurity at its core.
Our designs include services and solutions that securely and efficiently connect entire production lines, operating teams and enterprise systems to stream data in real-time and boost plant performance, adhering to IEC 62443 & NIST SP 800-82 security standards.
We design resilient and efficient communication architectures that connect your Machines, Field Assets, ICS, SCADA, MES and Enterprise Systems for you to visualise and analyse data in real-time. But, we don't stop there.
Besides all the advice you may need to improve your IT & OT Systems, we install and configure all your Industrial IT Systems, and offer you premium in-life support.
With our architectures and services, you ensure that:
With our context-based systems and zero trust policies/devices, we make sure that your IT & OT networks have a reduced attack surface, critical security controls/configurations, bottleneck-free workflows, well-maintained systems, and a security-aware workforce.
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We focus on constant monitoring of devices, services and user behaviour (events/logs) to establish their health, and choose zero trust services. With us, you gain in-depth visibility on your industrial IoT and ICS, so your IT and OT teams can work together to boost security.
Our resilient systems and infrastructure scalability play a fundamental role to keep your data and operations safe, regardless of the size and dispersion of your networks. We also offer fast and reliable recovery solutions to minimise downtime during an event.
To kick-start digital transformation in an industrial environment it is needed to design a converged architecture that unifies data from both OT and IT environments, streamlining business with operational processes. An integrated IT & OT network allows you to merge business processes, controls and insights into a seamless environment.
However, a Smart Factory will not be possible if your Operations and IT teams are not aligned to work together.
With our IT/OT Consulting Services, you will:
Perform a Gap Analysis
Polestar builds for you an assessment of ‘as-is’ skills, infrastructure, and risks to prioritise technology recommendations & implementations.
A starting point to developing a comprehensive
Polestar delivers an IT/OT Policy Document to support the organisational strategy for the required sites/facilities, which includes the planning of a secure and highly available network, the definition of ownership for each system layer, implementation guidelines, a standardised catalogue of hardware/software, and a definition of service levels.
We create a reference design for the integration of IT with OT networks and systems, including the update/implementation/configuration of HMI, PLC, SCADA & MES systems, servers, and safety controls.
Once the plan is signed off, we implement these designs ourselves!
Polestar designs IoT communication infrastructures to bridge the data & operational gaps between your OT & IT Systems, so visualising and analysing data in real-time becomes easier.
We deliver bespoke Industrial IoT strategies to help you implement technologies & processes, boosting operations and helping manufacturers to become industry leaders.
With our IoT Consulting Services and IoT Systems you will:
Smart factories are IoT dependent to monitor and transmit information about their environment, assets, and products. IT/OT convergence occurs in any business where IoT devices collect and transmit data for technicians to manage equipment and processes. Polestar helps you to merge these traditionally siloed processes for a seamless operational experience.
Kick-off Digital Transformation through Edge-first
We design and implement the best-in-class Edge to Cloud Platform to integrate your Field Assets for IoT enablement, allowing users to connect any production machine or device, regardless of brand or generation - in a single, unified and powerful system, granting manufacturers secure Edge access to their process and production data.
CNC Machinery, Robots and Automation Controls will be equipped with the right fit-for-purspose sensors and communication protocols, and will be connected to a secure network to start transfering data wherever you need it: might it be to On-premise or Cloud systems, from OT or Enterprise domains, or even to third-party Apps tailored to every management need.
Communication networks have evolved to learn how to optimise their production environments through Edge and Cloud connectivity, using the power of AI.
The physical, virtual, and logical design of infrastructure in an IT network (network design, architecture or topology) is key to allowing this to happen.
Communications infrastructure is the backbone that connects the data processes of any business. Through Network Design you ensure the scalability, security and appropriate configuration of the network and computing solutions, helping you to meet your operational and business needs.
Through Polestar's Network Design, Operations and IT Managers can configure and implement secure industrial IT & OT systems for both their brownfield and greenfield sites, enabling IoT and Smart Manufacturing.
A well-planned Network Design will provide bespoke solutions for your business requirements, utilising a complete array of network technologies that may include traditional LAN and WAN, WiFi or Cloud infrastructures, and topologies like ring, chain, tree, and mesh among others allowing for stable, efficient and resilient data transferring throughout your organisation.
Polestar helps you to discover which are your data, security and infrastructure needs for the implementation / update of your communication systems.
We develop a visual representation of your 'to-be' network and integrate physical connections; quantity, type, and location of all devices and endpoints; IP addresses; and security processes.
We dedicate appropriate time and resources to the design process to create a network that is easy to manage, cost-effective, and ready to scale.
Network security is built in during the early design stages to prevent incompatibility of security tools which affects network performance, user experience, and manageability.
We create a list of the specific resilience challenges of your organisation (security incidents, network issues, operations downtime, or scale up / down needs) and use these scenarios to test the network design's ability to respond.
We also provide a network management system for visibility into the network and monitoring of performance benchmarks.
Greenfields: Polestar assembles a list of assets, endpoints, users, devices, LANs, and other elements to create the first iterations of a network diagram.
Brownfields: Polestar integrates existing infrastructure, use patterns and workflows to inform the new network hierarchies and topologies, which are adapted to the needs of the IT, Security, Production and OT teams.
We also assess what sort of scaling (upsizing / downsizing) the organisation is going through to accommodate specific workflows.