Join the IT/OT Academy
Become a true IT/OT Insider!
For those who are working where IT meets OT.
For those who want to master the language and architectures.
By practitioners. For practitioners.
2027 cohorts starts on Jan 15, May 21, Sept 17
Let’s be honest…
We’ve all been talking about Industry 4.0 for over a decade now, but the dirty secret is: we still don’t know how to scale beyond those first two flashy pilots, let alone cooperate between IT and OT.
The IT/OT Academy was created in 2025 for exactly this moment. A live online course, built by practitioners, for practitioners, already followed by 100 students in our public cohorts and over 200 more through private Academies.
How does it work?
- Four live online sessions, 2.5 hours each full of interaction with us and peers;
- Every participant gets a complimentary 1-hour private session with David.
Our goal is to make digitalisation in manufacturing easier.
- Tackle the misunderstanding between IT and OT which is only growing.
- Improve the collaboration between two technical organisations (whether you’re inside trying to make it work, or outside trying to sell into it).
- Don’t get stuck in pilot purgatory: projects with the wrong architecture, with no real plan for how any of it scales past the first two proof points. (This is by the way something we see more than ever now that everyone’s racing to bolt AI onto last year’s POC)
It’s the training we wish we’d had.
So we built it, and now it’s yours too 🙂
And if 4 sessions leaves you wanting more, our new Deep Dives programme lets you keep going all year round: Monthly live sessions on the topics we can’t fully cover in four Fridays. More on that below.
Whether you’re working in a factory, designing a solution, or advising clients: you’ll finally get the frameworks and vocabulary to bridge the gap.
Your teachers: David and Willem
Trusted by end users from:
Is the IT/OT Academy for me?
I'm in IT
You feel it. That cultural wall. The silence when you propose a new solution. The meetings where "we cant risk shutting down production" get thrown around.
You want to…
- Speak the OT language and earn trust on the plant floor,
- Lead digital projects that actually land,
- Future-proof your career with OT fluency,
- Understand how you can translate OT requests into your IT architecture.
I'm in OT or Operations
You're drowning in buzzwords but starving for a clear roadmap. You know your systems. But Cloud? Designing a UNS? Building data pipelines? You're not sure where to begin.
You want to…
- Design a modern data architecture to use data to improve operations, beyond just gut feel,
- Understand when a UNS makes sense (and when it doesn't),
- Cooperate with IT as a partner
I'm a Technology Vendor
Your team builds great tech. But in the boardroom, the CIO loves your cloud pitch while the plant manager rolls their eyes.
You want to…
- Design products that serve both domains
- Communicate value in the right language
- Be seen as a trusted advisor
- Be able to identify the right champions and decision makers earlier
- Network with peers and end-users
I'm an SI or Consultant
Your clients are navigating the IT/OT maze and they expect you to guide them. But too often, the strategy feels fuzzy and the delivery fragile.
You want to…
- Structure IT/OT projects with confidence.
- Avoid cultural clashes and deliver lasting results.
- Earn credibility with a certificate and real-world tools.
- Extend your network
Top reasons why our first 100 participants joined
Understand the other
This is the most shared feedback. IT want to understand OT challenges and OT want to understand IT. Our Academy puts both of you in the same room and that results in very interesting discussions.
Learn from peers
People want to know how other companies are solving the same problems, not what a vendor recommends. Peer learning from different industries is a massive driver.
Make better decisions
Many attendees are moving into or already working in architecture and leadership roles. They got our frameworks for buy vs build, data architecture, platform choices, organisational decisions and more.
Understand why projects fail
Ownership issues, governance gaps, IT/OT conflicts, local vs global tensions… these themes come up repeatedly. Participants want to understand and act on the root causes, not just the symptoms.
Trusted by technology vendors, consultants and system integrators from:
Our Core Program
Session 1 (2.5h)
Understand, Cooperate, Scale
Why IT and OT see the world so differently, and what to do about it. We start by getting to know each other and the industries in the room, then move through the divergence trap, the CIO–COO disconnect, and how you actually engineer an organisation that can handle IT/OT cooperation day to day. We close by looking at what it takes to go from a working pilot to something that scales. This is where DataOps, the Unified Namespace, historians and brokers each earn their place.
Session 2 (2.5h)
Architecture
Time at the whiteboard. We live-draw architectural typicals for different industries and needs, pull apart diagrams from well-known vendors to see what's actually underneath the slide, and put our own capability map to work on your use cases (send them in ahead of time, and we'll build them into the session). One-stop shop vs best of breed. Historian vs broker (or do you need both?) Time series vs events. We'll get into it.
Session 3 (2.5h)
Case Study
Meet your playground: Sweet Harmony Treats, a large industrial bakery known for dangerously delicious waffles. You'll step into both IT and OT shoes to digitise their operations without breaking what already works. Analysing the problem, making the architectural calls (perfect solutions never exist, and this case is a good reminder of that), and thinking through who'll actually implement the plan and how you'll stop it coming to a halt after the first rollout.
Session 4 (2.5h)
Practitioner Panel + Q&A
Experienced industry leaders join to share how they've actually applied these principles: what organisational models look like, what DataOps really looks like on the factory floor. Space to network, challenge ideas, and connect directly with people shaping this space. Past guests include Stephanie LeBlanc (IT/OT integration in water & wastewater), Raf Swinnen (MES/Lean in a dairy plant) and Jan Meskens (AI governance).
Private Session (1h)
Ask David Anything
An on-demand, 1-hour slot with David to work through your specific questions and problems: technical, organisational or just personal career coaching. Bring the architecture decision you're stuck on, the reorg nobody's explained properly, the stakeholder who won't engage, or a career question that has nothing to do with any of that. If a few of you from the same company are in the cohort together, we can also do this as a group session instead of one-on-one.
Monthly Deep Dives (1.5h)
Keep learning, all year round
The Academy doesn't have to stop after four Fridays. Once a month, we go deep on a single topic: DataOps in practice, Industrial AI, cybersecurity and more. Live, with us or a guest speaker. Included in two of our three Academy tiers, with immediate access to the next session and all previous ones the moment you sign up.
What participants from previous groups had to say:
“Stepping into a new role in the IT/OT space, the IT/OT Academy was a fantastic experience to quickly get into the subject and understand the complexities in this area. It covered both the technological, organisational and human aspects when two different worlds meet. The content was well-structured and practical. The wealth of experience from the instructors, guest speakers, and participants was impressive and provided a great learning opportunity!”
“The IT/OT Academy is a great resource for people who are trying to solve problems and build solutions in the real world overlap between IT and OT organisations and technologies. Refreshingly free from buzzwords and vendor hype it is by practitioners and for practitioners.”
“We worked on a real-life use case of a company facing operational inefficiencies, which made the exercise feel relevant and hands-on. I especially valued the opportunity to collaborate with people from different industries and roles — from OT to IT — and to hear their perspectives. It really highlighted how complex OT/IT cooperation can be, with multiple steps and stakeholders involved in driving a successful project.”
“What an experience! Packed with inspiring insights and lively interaction with many other participants, we were guided through the topic of bridging the gap between IT and OT in interactive sessions and practical experience reports. I can highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to learn more about Industry 4.0, digitalization in a production context, and IT/OT integration. I am looking forward to what probably comes next! P.S.: Now I am well prepared to do more than just start my own cookie factory 🙂”
“I recently completed the IT/OT Academy, and it was an incredible experience. Collaborating with engineers and automation experts on real-world challenges game me fresh insights that directly shaped my recent talk on overcoming data silos and driving digital transformation. Big thanks to David and Willem for creating such a valuable space to learn and connect. Highly recommend!”
“I recently attended the ITOT.Academy cohort with David Ariens and Willem van Lammeren. I can highly recommend this to anyone wanting learn more about better collaboration between IT and OT teams in the Manufacturing space. Thank you for a great course and looking forward to new courses hopefully in the near future.”
“The Industrial Platform Capability Map referenced in the blog and put together by David Ariens and the team at The IT/OT Insider is a great framework for thinking about deploying an enterprise ready solution. [..] Trying to solve these one at a time may seen intuitive but leads to an unmanageable mess of software applications and custom code piecing together what should be an enterprise platform that scales.”
“What sets the ITOT.Academy apart is the way professionals from different industries and varying levels of maturity openly share their experiences, creating practical insights I can use in my own journey to drive IT/OT convergence.”
Need more than one seat? Bulk discounts are available: 3+1, 6+2 or 9+3!
Extra options:
Extend your Academy access with 10 more deep dives: 850 EUR / 990 USD
Book another 4 hours of private mentoring: 1000 EUR / 1160 USD
VAT (where applicable) is not included – All dates are subject to change – Our
Terms & Conditions apply
This training is offered by IT-OT Insider BV, Eetveldstraat 40, 1980 Eppegem, Belgium. VAT Number: BE1024.106.895
All questions and remarks can be send to academy@itotinsider.com
Want more?
Meet the IT/OT Academy Deep Dives
The Academy gets you the foundations in four sessions.
The Deep Dives is where we keep going.
Where the article and the podcast stop, we dig further. Live, monthly sessions going deep on one topic at a time: DataOps in practice, Industrial AI, NIS2, building ontologies, and more. Ninety minutes, Fridays at 15:00 CET, ten sessions a year. Recordings of all previous sessions at your disposal.
Two of our Academy tiers come with Deep Dives bundled in.
Sign up for either, and you get access to the very next Deep Dive session immediately (even before your cohort starts).
Coming up next
Fri 13 Nov 2026 · 15:00 CET
Deep Dive – November 2026
Fri 11 Dec 2026 · 15:00 CET
Deep Dive – December 2026
Fri 8 Jan 2027 · 15:00 CET
Deep Dive – January 2027
FAQ
Do I get a certificate?
Do I need to have your book?
How can I attend the sessions?
Do we get bulk discounts?
Need more than 13 seats? Get a custom quote or book a private cohort!
Why should my company sponsor this training?
- Fewer failed pilots – we help your people see beyond proof-of-concepts and actually land projects that scale.
- Stronger collaboration across silos – your IT and OT teams stop talking past each other and start pulling in the same direction.
- In-house expertise you can trust – instead of leaning endlessly on consultants, you build lasting capabilities inside your own team.
In short, sponsoring this training means your next Industry 4.0/Digital Manufacturing/Innovation… initiative has a far better shot at delivering real business value.
What's the difference between the Academy and the Deep Dives?
What happens if I cannot make it to one of the sessions?
Do I get an invoice?
I need to go through purchasing first, can I get a quote?
Can I book this training on behalf of someone else?
Are refunds possible?
However, if you would be unexpectedly unavailable at the time of your cohort, we can move you into another cohort taking place now or in the future.
Do you also offer an e-learning?
However, all sessions are recorded and are sent to you in case you can't make it.
Questions about the Academy?
Not sure which cohort or plan fits, or want to book for a whole team? Send us a message and we’ll get back to you.