Nokia
Evolve Your Railway Data Center Network
Put data center fabrics and OT cloud to work to transform your railway operations.
Why Railways Are Moving Operational Technology to the OT Cloud
Railway operators everywhere are working to expand their high-speed services, boost train capacity, enhance passenger services and improve safety and security. They are also searching for better ways to deal with disruptions caused by powerful weather events and economic shifts.
Many operators are addressing these challenges by migrating their operational technology (OT) applications and data to a segregated, on-premises cloud environment known as the OT cloud. The first wave of migration is underway and includes OT applications such as:
- FRMCS, train-to-ground broadband wireless core and other telecommunication systems
- Group communications, push-to-talk (PTT) and push-to-video (PTV)
- Next-generation computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems
- Computer-based interlocking (IXL) and digital signaling systems
- SCADA systems
To get maximum benefit from your OT cloud, you need data centers that can provide resilient, scalable and secure connectivity for the servers that host your OT applications and data. This connectivity, interworking with the WAN, will help you use OT to create an adaptive digital rail system that uses data-driven automation to respond to new challenges with smarter decisions, greater efficiency and higher agility.
Extending Mission-Critical OT Communications Into the Data Center
As you migrate applications to the OT cloud, you extend your mission-critical railway network into a data center network domain called the data center fabric. Your data center fabric already plays an essential role in supporting your IT applications. It must now evolve to meet the higher networking demands of your OT equipment and applications.
In this new mission-critical network blueprint, intelligent equipment and sensors generate data at remote locations across your physical railway infrastructure. This data may first be processed by local edge computer systems before being collected and aggregated by trackside, station or train-to-ground networks.
The mission-critical IP/MPLS backbone core network then transports the data to the OT cloud, which has a dedicated compute pool for OT applications. The data center fabric provides all the connections that OT applications in this compute pool need to communicate with each other and intelligent rail assets across the infrastructure.
