 And we're going to move to the panel session now. So I invite our speakers so far this morning to join me on the panel, if you would. Start your videos if you're able to, but certainly at least be able to answer the questions on audio. And in addition to our speakers this morning, we have one additional panel member who'll be familiar to anyone who's involved in the Open Process Automation Forum. It's great to have Don Bartusiak with us. So Don is the president of Collaboration Systems Integration and co-chair of the Open Process Automation Forum. In October last year, he retired as chief engineer for process control for ExxonMobil Research and Engineering with 33 years experience. From 1977 to 84, he was a research engineer for Bethlehem Steel. And at Exxon, he implemented real-time artificial intelligence, linear and non-linear model predictive control and real-time optimization applications. From the mid-90s, he held supervisory or senior technical positions responsible for instrumentation process analyzers, control systems and control applications. And from 2000 to 2002, he was an adjunct professor at Rice University. You get the picture, Don has a lot of experience here and has been a very active participant in the forum and was instrumental in starting it. So welcome to all our panelists. I'm not currently seeing you all on video, but I'm sure you're there. There we are, I recognize Don. Nice to see you. So, nice to see you. So, thank you all to our speakers for your inputs this morning. And we've had some great comments in the chat about how useful the presentations are. I also want to, we've had some other questions coming in. So I'm gonna start with one that was originally addressed to Brandon, but I think it's certainly something that you may all have something to talk about. And that is the question that says, can the speaker elaborate on the openness concept from experience and perspective? Obviously openness is something dear to my heart, but the openness angle that you mentioned, Brandon, if you're there, can you expand on that? And if not, if anyone else would like to expand on the importance of the openness side of this. So I'm not seeing or hearing Brandon. So I do see Don and Anil. But Brandon, you are there, I think, but maybe on mute. No, thankfully. There you go. So you were emphasizing the openness aspect, Brandon. You know what, it was great. Yeah, I mean, they messed up on that. You're speaking to someone else? Video and audio were out there. Oh, maybe he is. Brandon, you're live on the panel. In the meantime, I'm going to go to somebody that I know can say something on this. Don, I know you've- Yeah, so Steve, I- I've been on this in the past. Right, I would say the business reason for openness is it enables innovation to occur. And suppliers, technology providers can access the customers ultimately when there is, when open architecture prevails. Steve, you will remember at the time we kicked off the open process automation forum, I used the analogy to the Renaissance. I mean, and that's really what I firmly believe. The openness based on industry standards that enables suppliers to enter the business ecosystem is the way to provide the maximum amount of value to the customers. That is the basic principle. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we heard about avoiding tie-in and all of those points too. So let's move on to the next question that came in which is, let's see, maybe this is one that Gene are you with us? Yes, can you hear me, Steve? I can hear you loud and clear, Gene, thank you. So maybe you can start with this one or if it's not for you, then someone else can step in. But what tools are being used in the digital transition to converged IT and OT in industrial engineering? Sure, I can give a few examples for my company and then I encourage the other panelists to weigh in as well. For my company, Merck, we have standardized compute platforms. This is really above level two in the Purdue model. So the use of hyperconvergence, virtualization, these are all technologies we rapidly have adopted and deploy and again, illustrate how IT and OT are converging. Great. Anyone else want to comment on the tools that are being used? If not, okay. Another question that we had in, can anyone speak to? And I know Brandon gave a text reply to this, but can anyone speak to examples of products that are starting to come to market here that the open standards are helping bring to market? Anyone want to talk about products? I'll take that one, Steve. And so I have a unique perspective from the inside perspective from OPAS. So I hear the murmurs and I hear some ideas being batted around from end to end, but in terms of product development and commercial offerings for products or systems that are aligned with the OPAS standard, I've seen conversations around our virtual test bed. I've seen comments and conversation and correspondences around test beds, prototypes and field trials from a lot of our end users that have active partnerships with some of the vendors and suppliers. And more recently, I've seen like a coalition of members from within the forum banding together to create and offer a system that is composed of components that are aligned with the OPAS standard. And a system like that, which is soon to be commercially available, will allow end users to, they can acquire this kind of like hands-on tinkering type system that can allow them to kind of tinker with and experiment with a system that has like an open architecture. And that'll be kind of like the first type of system that's available to the market for folks to begin playing with and experiencing an open kind of architecture or a system that kind of has an open architecture. Okay, thank you. There are types of products coming to market. You know, those are three kind of different avenues that I've seen. That's great. And well, as you say, we'll start to see and hear more about that as these groups of companies working together progress what they're doing. So thank you for that. Anyone else want to come up? I mean, it's an exciting time, Steve, to see a lot of these markets coming or saw a lot of these products coming to market. And, you know, as folks begin to interoperate and kind of, you know, put a heterogeneous system of components together, it is quite exciting. There's the new coalition that I mentioned is called COPA Quick Start. And then there are other folks that are interoperating components that, you know, are based on, you know, very small and inexpensive hardware systems like Raspberry Pi and stuff like that. So yes, it is quite exciting. It is great to see when the products start coming into the market based on the standards. And I remember in this case being at an event in the very early days and somebody said, oh, there will never be products for this. So it's great to see it happening. Next question. And I think, let's see, this question is about digitalization initiatives. So for digitalization initiatives, that a client usually hires IT companies, some or many of whom don't have the domain knowledge, for example, in the oil and gas industry. How can this gap be bridged? And how specifically can an automation and domain knowledge play a constructive part in this digital transformation? Who wants to take that? Is that one that you might wanna tackle an ant initially? If not, I'm open to volunteers. Steve, this is Jane. Maybe I can address that. Thanks, Jane. It's a timely topic because we are talking to primarily IT companies who come and offer a ray of services, wanna help with our digital initiatives. Many of them do lack the OT or the industry-specific expertise. And to bridge that divide, I've noticed they've started purchasing system integrators in the space to immediately upskill their folks with domain knowledge. So it's something that's very difficult to organically grow within your company. And in my opinion, it's best acquired, but that's just one man's opinion. Okay. Yeah, Steve, if I may comment, I think, so Jean just highlighted a situation where the IT service providers are adding to their skillset by acquiring OT systems integrators. The converse can happen, which is the OT control systems integrators can build out their IT and computer science and networking skills. And then maybe the third possibility is one where my company, current company, is engaged with by partnering with C-Plane networks, bringing IT domain expertise and OT domain expertise together in partnership opportunities. So I would say there are the three things that are happening in the industry to meet that customer need. Great. Thanks for adding that, Tom. Next question. In the IoT 4.0 based system, how does, how can the SIS system be upgraded specifically in the hydrocarbon industries? Those are specific. Can anyone tackle that one? So in the IoT 4.0 based system, how does the SIS system get upgraded specifically in a hydrocarbon industry? Maybe, maybe very, very, maybe too specific here. Well, the SIS is the safety instrumented system, Steve. That is the safety shutdown system, which by industry standard, principles is kept separate from controls. So I could elaborate on that, but I think that I would say the SIS is a special case that because of its operational criticality and safety criticality, requires very careful and methodical planning when upgrades of those systems are required. There's an interface between SISs and the control system, but the SIS itself in general is kept separate from the control system. I'll stop there. Right, that's great, but you've given me a nice segue into the next question, Don, which is more general, more generally about security. How will the security be enhanced in the open standards-based systems? There's, I think it's compared to what, Steve, is maybe the, is one way to think about it. The challenge today is that most industrial control systems really rely on security by obscurity. And the systems are very old. They were never, you know, they could be 20 or more years old and they were never made to have exposure to the internet to they're not made for easy upgrades or patches. And, you know, once bad actors figure out how to exploit that, they're extremely vulnerable. And modern IT systems are fighting that battle every day. And as we've seen, even modern systems, you know, can be vulnerable. So there's no guarantee. But the question is, can you evolve your security posture to meet an evolving threat? And open systems, it's really the only way to do that. They're just a single, single vendor of a proprietary system cannot, does not have the resources to manage that, to update their system constantly to manage every threat. And open systems is just a much broader community instead of tools to do that. So sort of like open systems, may not be inherently secure. They're just a lot more secure than every other option. So it's just part of the ongoing battle. Good way of putting it. Yeah, if you try and do it all yourself, you're always in catch-up mode, aren't you? Okay, let's move on. We're running short on time. But is it possible to reprogram the existing manufacturing devices based on open standards? Anyone want to take that one? Can we just reprogram the existing manufacturing devices to meet the standards? Well, I'll be very blunt here. I mean, we've worked with a number of PLC vendors and with a few of the DCS vendors. And these systems are not made to be accessed. The way that just internally, if you think of a particular, like a PLC, they're not made to be accessed. Now there's some examples, Phoenix Contact and PLC Open, and PLC Next, I guess, have really come a long way. So that's, there are definitely a few systems that are made that way, but far and away the other systems that we've dealt with, there's no way to get access to the root things that you would need to upgrade. So the answer is no. They were never intended that way, were they? They never were. They're very smart, well engineered inside their stack. The problem is that's not sufficient anymore. It's just right. So if I can chime in to my loud tune, David Ford here from Ruck Automation, my answer to that question be some yes, some no, right? That there are certainly PLCs which have the resources needed to perform this kind of thing. And there are other PLCs that are old enough or cheap enough that they just don't have the resources they need. But we fully anticipate that some will be reprogrammable and other tall. Right. Okay, we're gonna move to what I'm afraid is gonna have to be the last question given time. There are one or two more in the Q and A that if any of our panelists could get to answer that would be appreciated, I'm sure by the askers. This one is, this one's an interesting one, I'm sure a lot of people are thinking about. Could the panelists elaborate on how different end users have started on their journey towards the migration to open systems? And are there any starter kits available? So any examples of how different end users have started their journey towards migrating to open systems? Anyone wanna take that? Yeah, the best way is to be involved in the forum and to be involved in the standard. And because that is the entire ecosystem of everyone that's innovating. And I would say that every company that's involved is contributing to that, creating that on-ramp to make that migration and to begin that journey. Because it's in the standards body, I would just say that there's a group of members of OPAF that have come together and made an offering and Don Bartiziek and myself are very involved in that. And if you wanna look it up, it's copacontrol.org, C-O-P-A, control.org. But I'm not trying to make a plug for that, but we've given a lot of thought to how do people get started from a technical standpoint. But the most important thing is to become involved in the forum. Yeah, Steve, in addition to the COPA Quick Start activity that Brandon just cited, half a dozen of the operating companies in the OPA forum have shared information publicly about their steps to build OPAFs aligned systems. And that would include ExxonMobil, BASF, Georgia Pacific Affiliate of Coke Industries, Saudi Aramco, Petronas, and Reliance Industries. So those half a dozen companies have been bringing information to the public domain about what they're doing in addition to COPA Quick Start. Thanks for that Don, yeah. Any last comment from anyone else on the panel on that topic? And if not, we'll call it a day for this panel. Thank you all the panelists and speakers today so far. We're gonna take a 15 minute break now, 15 minutes, and then we'll be back with some more presentations and after that another panel session. Meanwhile, a warm thank you from the open group for your contributions this morning, gentlemen. Thank you.