Industry 4.0 makes the Cloud one of its pillars: a powerful and essential tool for connecting the factory, synchronizing data and accelerating systems intelligence. Every day, the media announces that more and more manufacturers are migrating their infrastructure to the Cloud for almost every functional use of their data: Carlsberg, Danone, Renault, etc., and even... the DGAC (Civil Aviation). This strategy is a must for manufacturers who want to gain in competitiveness at lower cost and in complete security, by unleashing the full potential of their Energy data.
Manufacturers are very attached to their data. Their reflex is sometimes to hide it locally in a confined and unique environment. Paradoxically, this is a very risky move, because in the event of theft, everything will be lost. No company still keeps its turnover in a safe in the manager's office, even though it is a very important asset for the business. Money has been circulating virtually for decades thanks to the banks, which centralize and secure this information far from the heart of corporate life. This practice is no longer questioned at all today: who would go back, and at what cost? Similarly, Salesforce has become the leader in CRM (Customer Relationship Management ), with a 100% Cloud tool that manipulates crucial company data: customer names, sales figures, average shopping basket, and so on. Many manufacturers have now chosen this type of professional solution to facilitate the management of their customer data: Groupe Bel, Pernod-Ricard, General Electric, L'Oréal, etc. Energy-related data in a multi-site industrial company can also quickly become very numerous, and require a business intelligence solution to make the most of them.
More and more manufacturers are abandoning their infrastructure for the Cloud: Valeo, for example, uses Gmail for its employees, and has freed itself overnight from costly and time-consuming migration projects between the market's historic messaging solutions. This choice stems from the desire not to have to manage server infrastructure or on-site consultants for several months or even years. Medium-sized companies (ETI) that have not yet had the "good fortune" to experience the interminable installation of an On Premise ERP** have every interest in making the move to the Cloud for their Energy data, before being blocked by an initial choice fraught with consequences. This choice is easy to make: on the one hand, a heavy investment in a fixed solution costing up to several hundred thousand euros, and requiring costly version upgrades. On the other hand, a subscription to an outsourced solution, available and updated (no more obsolescence), amortized in a few weeks and flexible in terms of commitment, duration and options.
Corporate data is often stored with a very questionable level of security, whatever the choice of storage, Cloud or On Premise. In hindsight, it's risky to put all your passwords in a single place, with a folder and files of the same name. Data loss is a nightmare that no industrialist wants to live through: like when a hard disk gives up the ghost when it was the only existing copy. Or when a virus mobilizes the entire IT department, causing all the data on a local server to be lost for lack of synchronization or automated backup. Common sense must play its part in a company's security strategy: don't put all your data in a single place, encrypt information, don't name your files too explicitly, don't choose passwords known to everyone, etc. IT security is above all a matter of common sense, not just architecture, and does not have just two states, 0 (=100% secure) or 1 (=0% secure). Like road safety, everyone knows the risks, but still takes their car every day. Choosing the provider (Amazon or sovereign cloud, ISO 27001?) and knowing its active (intrusion detection?) and passive (encryption, IP, etc?) security capabilities, and the data to be stored on it, is the right way to approach this subject.
What about your Energy data? How secure is it?
