Advanced OT Solutions
Bridging the plant floor and the boardroom — where industrial operations meet the systems that run the business.
What this practice is, in two minutes.
Every industrial site we walk into is full of operational technology — sensors, PLCs, SCADA systems, industrial controllers, meters, drives — that generates enormous amounts of data every second. Most of that data is never collected, never connected to IT systems, and never used for anything beyond the local control loop it was designed for. Meanwhile, the organisations that operate this equipment are under growing pressure to digitise, optimise, and run reliably with fewer people on the floor. They know they need to act. They do not know where to start.
Our practice exists to change that. Across four sequential layers — assessment, data collection and sensor augmentation, visualisation and integration, and control with closed-loop optimisation — we extend twenty-five years of IT, networking, and cybersecurity discipline into the physical world. Alongside the layered stack sits a parallel set of advanced edge intelligence capabilities: edge AI vision on fixed cameras and autonomous drones, custom and bespoke low-code OT, and indoor location intelligence. The four layers are a maturity ladder; the edge intelligence capabilities can be deployed at any rung.
We are not Siemens. We are not Honeywell. We do not want to be. Customers in our region will look at us as an IT company first, not an industrial vendor — and our differentiation flows from exactly that: vendor independence, lower cost, custom projects, fast results. We integrate; we do not lock the customer into a single industrial stack. We sell outcomes — reduced downtime, optimised energy, production data visible in the ERP, automated quality inspection — not the technology underneath them.
Start small, grow big. The DIY mentality is the entry point for the relationships that grow.
Customers in our region do not start by signing seven-figure platform deals with industrial vendors. They start with a problem, a small budget, and very often an ageing system already on the floor — and all of that is fine. We meet the operation where it is, work with the equipment that is already there, and prove the idea using Raspberry Pi, ESP32, sourced sensors, and an open-source stack: a reliable, properly engineered solution built from inexpensive components that are there to prove the concept. From there we grow — into mid-market platforms, then into Zenon-class industrial-grade systems — as the customer is ready. The DIY mentality is not a fallback for cheap deals; it is the entry point for the relationships that grow.
Our vendor approach reflects that. We work across four SCADA/HMI tracks — COPA-DATA Zenon for regulated verticals, a flexible mid-market SCADA/HMI platform for fast-changing manufacturing environments, and a fully open-source stack (MQTT, Node-RED, InfluxDB, Grafana) for cost-sensitive and lightweight scenarios — plus custom low-code OT for niche, non-enterprise needs. Beyond SCADA, the practice partners across a broad vendor ecosystem: NVIDIA for edge AI compute, Zebra for sub-meter indoor location, smart camera and drone vendors for the edge intelligence stack, and a wide set of sensors, edge devices, and components as the use case demands.
We are a system integrator. We do not build products.
We have spent a quarter of a century building infrastructure, networks, cybersecurity, and cloud across most of South-East Europe. That heritage is what makes the OT practice credible. End-to-end delivery — including the OT cybersecurity engagement, the GPU and network infrastructure under the edge AI, the integration into ERP and other enterprise systems — runs through one relationship with us. Two sibling practices sit alongside this one: AI & Software Engineering owns the intelligence layer; Infrastructure & Cybersecurity owns the network, cloud, and security delivery behind the OT work.
At a glance
The Assessment opens every door
Two-headed assessment — current digitisation state and current cybersecurity exposure, in one engagement. The front door to every subsequent layer.
Start small, grow big
DIY-first when it fits. Raspberry Pi, ESP32, sourced sensors, open-source stack to prove the use case. Industrial-grade when the customer is ready to scale.
Multi-vendor by design
Open source through industrial. Zenon for regulated, a flexible platform for mid-market, open stack for fast pilots. No vendor lock-in, no single-platform pitches.
Security is the gate
You cannot safely advance OT without addressing the security of what you are building on. The assessment reads digitisation and security exposure together, and the security work is delivered by people who understand the OT environment — not generic IT security bolted on.
Honest consultancy
We tell customers the pros, the cons, the price, and the trade-offs. We recommend what is right for them — not what is most profitable for us in a single transaction. This is how we earn the next conversation.
End-to-end through one partner
The OT practice owns sensor-to-data-landing-zone. AI & Software Engineering owns intelligence. Infrastructure & Cybersecurity owns networks, cloud, and security delivery. One client relationship across all of it.
Why most OT programmes stall — and how ours reach production.
Our approach is built to avoid both failure modes. The four-layer ladder is a sequence, not a single purchase: customers move up it at their own pace, and most start at Layer 1 with the assessment. Only the layers the customer needs get built. Only the platforms that fit the customer's reality get recommended. And the entry-level cost is set by what can be done with open-source tools and DIY components, not by what a vendor catalogue requires.
Three principles do most of the work.
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01
Start small, grow big. The first engagement is sized to prove the case in weeks, not years. DIY components, open-source platforms, and a single use case the customer can measure. If it works, we scale into industrial-grade. If it does not, we have saved a much larger mistake.
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02
Security alongside digitisation. The Layer 1 assessment reads digitisation state and cybersecurity exposure together. Customers who advance OT without addressing the security of what they are building on are putting the business at risk; we will not pretend that is acceptable. Where regulation applies — NIS2 and the IEC and ISO standards that govern OT — we map the engagement to the compliance path.
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03
Multi-vendor, customer-driven. Four SCADA/HMI tracks. A broad sensor and edge ecosystem. We recommend the combination that fits the customer's maturity, scale, and budget — not the combination that fits our vendor incentives. Vendors and pricing models change fast. Our job is to know the difference, and to keep our customers from being stranded on a single bet.
Four layers, plus parallel edge intelligence.
The four layers describe an OT maturity ladder. Most clients start at Layer 1, the assessment, and grow up the ladder as confidence and ambition build. Advanced edge intelligence sits alongside the ladder, not on top of it — a parallel set of capabilities a customer can buy at any maturity level.
Assessment & Roadmap
The Layer 1 assessment is the entry point for every relationship we want to build in OT. It is a structured consulting engagement that walks the plant, reads the network, and produces a living model of the OT environment — together with a prioritised roadmap for what to do next.
The assessment is two-headed by design. The first read is digitisation state — what sensors, what PLCs, what protocols, who talks to whom, what data exists today, what is being collected and what is not. The second read is cybersecurity exposure — what is exposed, what is segmented, what is unprotected, where the risks sit against IEC 62443 and NIS2. The two reads happen in one engagement because they cannot be separated: you cannot safely advance OT without knowing what you are building on, and you cannot prioritise the cybersecurity work without knowing what is there.
The output is not a PowerPoint. It is a living model of the OT environment that the customer's team can act on — and that our subsequent layer engagements, plus our Infrastructure & Cybersecurity practice, can pick up without rescoping.
What the assessment includes
- Physical walkthrough protocols and structured site interviews — IT, OT, and operations stakeholders
- Asset and data-flow mapping — sensors, PLCs, controllers, gateways, protocols
- Network topology mapping and selective protocol sniffing
- Cybersecurity exposure read — segmentation, perimeter, remote access, vendor exposure
- Gap analysis against IEC 62443 and NIS2 alignment
- Prioritised digitisation roadmap with estimated business cases
- Fixed-fee packages by complexity — small site, multi-site, enterprise
Data Collection & Sensor Augmentation
Once the assessment surfaces the data the customer already has — and the data they do not — Layer 2 collects what is there and, where data points are missing, proposes and deploys the additional sensors. Sensor augmentation is offered as an optional companion to data collection, not as a separate engagement: the same conversation that confirms what we connect to confirms what is worth adding.
Connectivity. Non-invasive connection through OPC-UA, span ports, network taps, unidirectional data diodes and protocol converters for air-gapped and high-assurance OT zones, vendor APIs, historian and SCADA connectors. Where lightweight bridging is enough, we use Node-RED and open-source gateways. Where full SCADA/HMI engineering is needed, we move into Layer 4 with Zenon or a mid-market SCADA/HMI platform.
Sensor augmentation. Where the assessment shows missing data points, the practice proposes how to fill the gap — at a cost tier the customer chooses. We are honest about the trade-offs. DIY components — Raspberry Pi, ESP32, sourced sensors — at the cheap end, with appropriate security hardening. Industrial-grade sensors at the expensive end, with the certifications and lifetimes that regulated environments require. We will help the customer pick the right tier for their site, their budget, and their tolerance for ongoing maintenance.
Edge processing. Lightweight edge logic for filtering, buffering, and protocol translation before data leaves the plant. Where the deployment calls for it, an industrial gateway or small edge computer near the equipment; where the deployment is light, software on existing infrastructure.
Visualisation & Integration
Layer 3 puts the collected data in one place. The system sees, but does not yet act. This is where most of our clients realise the value of the previous layers — operational dashboards on the plant floor, management dashboards for the boardroom, and integration into the enterprise systems where decisions are actually made.
Data platform. Open-source stack — MQTT, InfluxDB, Grafana — for proofs of concept, cost-sensitive deployments, and the kinds of environments where a customer needs full ownership of the stack. Google Cloud — Pub/Sub, BigQuery — for enterprise analytics where the workload justifies it. The choice is customer-driven, not vendor-driven; we will not push a cloud platform where an open-source one fits, or the reverse.
Visualisation. Operational dashboards designed for the people who run the plant — clear, dense, real-time. Management dashboards designed for executives and operators — the metrics that matter, the trends, the exceptions. Both are part of the same delivery.
Enterprise system integration. The point where Layer 3 terminates and the business applications start. Production and operations data pushed into SAP, Dynamics, or other ERP. CRM systems where customer-facing OT data is relevant. IT service management platforms when OT events should feed incident or service workflows. This intersection is delivered jointly with our future Business Applications practice — we build the data flow into the system; the receiving system and the workflows on top belong to the business applications side.
Control, Actuation & Closed-Loop Optimisation
The highest-value layer in the maturity ladder. Where the system goes from seeing to acting. Layer 4 is where the data collected and visualised by the layers below it starts to drive decisions back into the physical environment — automatically, continuously, and at scale.
SCADA and HMI engineering. Full OT application development for the customers who need it. COPA-DATA Zenon for regulated verticals — utilities, district heating, electrical substations, water treatment — where IEC 61850 substation certification, IEC 62443 compliance, redundancy, and high-availability features matter as procurement requirements rather than marketing claims. For flexible mid-market manufacturing — mixed protocols, fast-changing requirements, budget pressure — we engineer on a modern, licence-efficient SCADA/HMI platform suited to large tag counts and rapid custom logic, building our partnerships in this tier over time.
Closed-loop optimisation. The connection between the AI models trained in our sibling AI & Software Engineering practice and the OT control layer that acts on them. Battery charge-discharge optimisation in solar parks. Energy consumption optimisation in industrial buildings. Predictive maintenance pushed from analytics back into maintenance schedules. The model trains in the cloud; the loop closes at the edge.
Enterprise integration of control. The control layer connected to ERP, MES, CMMS, and cloud analytics — the loop that runs the business, not just the plant. This is where OT and IT genuinely converge.
Advanced Edge Intelligence
Edge intelligence sits alongside the four-layer ladder, not on top of it. These are specialised capabilities customers can buy at any maturity level — a small site might do an edge AI vision pilot without ever touching closed-loop control; an inspection-heavy operator might invest in drones before they invest in any plant-floor sensors at all. The list is not exhaustive; this is an open area where the practice expects to grow as the underlying technology matures.
Edge AI Vision — fixed cameras and autonomous drones. NVIDIA Jetson (Orin NX and AGX Orin) as the edge compute platform, smart cameras with onboard inference from vendors like FLIR, Basler, and Axis, and industrial drones — increasingly treated as flying CV platforms. We stay vendor-flexible here: we work with platforms such as Skydio or DJI, or build a custom drone where the use case demands it. On fixed cameras: quality inspection, defect detection, people counting, PPE compliance, anomaly detection. On drones: infrastructure inspection, construction monitoring, warehouse management — the camera moves to the asset rather than the asset moving past the camera. The customer gets one team: our AI & Software Engineering colleagues build and validate the models, and we deploy the hardware, place the cameras, integrate the drone fleet, and connect the inference output to the operational systems on the floor.
Custom and bespoke low-code OT. For niche, non-enterprise needs. Home Assistant, Node-RED, and cost-effective sensors. Fast delivery, relationship-building, and often the entry point for bigger projects with the same customer. Where a small office, a retail location, or a side process needs intelligence — without the weight of an industrial platform — this is where we land.
Location intelligence with Zebra RTLS. Real-time location tracking using Zebra Ultra-Wideband and RFID, with sub-meter accuracy indoors. Fundamentally different from Wi-Fi-based location, which gives room-level accuracy at best. UWB can tell you which shelf a tool is on, which zone a forklift is in, whether a worker has entered a restricted area. We have Zebra demo equipment in hand, have designed the architecture, and have an office pilot in motion — with a formal partnership under negotiation.
A connective thread runs through all of these: the customer gets one team that designs, deploys, and integrates the whole solution — the AI models built by our AI & Software Engineering colleagues, the hardware, the camera and drone placement, the edge infrastructure, and the connection into the systems on the floor.
Multi-vendor by design.
We do not build on a single industrial vendor's stack and call it integration. We work across multiple tiers — open-source foundations and DIY components for proving the case, SCADA/HMI platforms for production engineering, edge AI and specialised hardware for the advanced capabilities — and we certify our people across the partnerships that matter for delivery.
Clients get recommendations based on their specific maturity, scale, and budget — not on our commercial incentives. Several additional partnerships across the OT and edge ecosystem are in the process of being formalised, and will appear here as they go live.
Where most of our engagements begin. MQTT brokers (Mosquitto, EMQX), Node-RED for protocol bridging and edge logic, InfluxDB for time-series storage, Grafana for visualisation. Open-source foundations let us prove the case without upfront platform investment, and keep serving as components of production systems at any scale. For customers who want full ownership of the stack, this is the path.
A tier unique to our practice. Raspberry Pi and ESP32 microcontrollers, sourced sensors from a wide range of suppliers, hardened with appropriate security. Where a customer wants to know what a use case looks like before they spend money on industrial-grade equipment, this is how we prove it — a reliable, properly engineered solution built from inexpensive components, with a clear path to industrial-grade when the customer is ready. The customer pays for our consultancy and engineering; the instruments themselves are practically free.
SCADA / HMI platform for regulated verticals. IEC 61850 certification for energy substations, IEC 62443 compliance for security-sensitive environments, redundancy and high-availability features that lightweight platforms cannot match. These are engineering capabilities that matter in environments where standards compliance is a procurement gate, not a nice-to-have. We hold an existing partnership and are working toward a deeper certification tier. The right starting point when the customer is a utility, a substation operator, or a water treatment facility.
The flexible, licence-efficient track for mid-market manufacturing — rapid custom logic, large tag counts at predictable cost, fast iteration. The right starting point for customers with mixed protocols, fast-changing requirements, and budget pressure. We engineer on the platform that fits the customer, and are building our partnerships in this tier over time.
Partner for edge AI compute. NVIDIA Jetson (Orin NX and AGX Orin) as the industrial-grade edge inference platform for vision and AI workloads. NVIDIA Metropolis and DeepStream as the software layer for video analytics pipelines. TBS is one of the few registered NVIDIA partners in South-East Europe — a genuine differentiator for the edge AI vision work, on both fixed cameras and drones.
In negotiation for indoor location intelligence. Zebra Ultra-Wideband and RFID give sub-meter accuracy where Wi-Fi-based location cannot reach. We have demo equipment in hand, the architecture designed, and an office pilot in motion, and are working toward a formal partnership. Combined with the infrastructure customers already have, we offer layered indoor intelligence where the precision is needed.
Under active evaluation. FLIR, Basler, and Axis are the candidates we are testing for the fixed-camera edge AI vision stack — looking at edge inference capability, industrial certifications (IP ratings, temperature range), integration with NVIDIA DeepStream, and the availability of evaluation units. One formal partnership will be confirmed during the year.
Deliberately vendor-flexible: Skydio is an active conversation, but we work equally with DJI or build a custom drone where the use case requires it. The relationship we want is about integration capability, not reseller revenue — making drones smarter with our computer vision and automation, and delivering actionable intelligence from autonomous inspection. We are not in mass-market drone resale; our sister company handles traditional operator-driven drone sales, and that is a different business.
Beyond the partnerships above, the practice will engage with a wide set of sensor, edge device, and component vendors as use cases require. The list here is a floor, not a ceiling. If the technology you want to use is not listed, ask us.
End-to-end through one relationship.
The OT practice owns the physical edge — sensors, controllers, edge compute, OT-layer visualisation, the integration into the systems on the floor. Two sibling practices sit alongside it, and together we cover every layer a real industrial digitisation programme needs. A single client relationship. One commercial conversation. One integrated delivery team.
The gap between a pilot that worked on a single sensor and a production system the business depends on is almost always somewhere outside the OT layer — in the network fabric, the identity system, the data platform, the AI model, the enterprise integration, or the compliance boundary. We can deliver across all of it through one partner.
AI & Software Engineering
Our sibling practice brings the intelligence layer — the AI models, training, optimisation, evaluation — and the software that connects them. For the customer this is one team, not two vendors: AI & Software Engineering builds and validates the models, and the OT practice deploys them into the physical environment and integrates them with the systems on the floor. It shows up in every edge intelligence engagement (vision, drones, custom CV), every closed-loop optimisation in Layer 4, and every conversational analytics use case grounded in OT data.
Infrastructure & Cybersecurity
Two intersections sit here. On edge-to-cloud infrastructure, Infrastructure & Cybersecurity owns the networking, GPU, and cloud infrastructure that runs underneath OT solutions — every OT design includes infrastructure from day one. On OT cybersecurity, the point is simple: securing an OT environment is not the same as securing IT. A security design built without real OT understanding protects the wrong things and breaks the right ones. Our advantage is that deep OT know-how and deep cybersecurity know-how live in the same group — engineers who understand the plant, the protocols, and the process, paired with security expertise across network, identity, and threat layers. The customer gets security that actually fits how the operation runs.
The future Business Applications practice
Layer 3 of the OT portfolio terminates at the boundary with business applications. The OT side delivers the data flow into enterprise systems — SAP, Dynamics, or other ERP; CRM systems where customer-facing OT data is relevant; IT service management platforms when OT events should feed incident or service workflows. The business applications side owns the receiving systems and the workflows on top. This intersection will become more formal as the Business Applications practice forms.
Field Services
TBS runs its own field-engineering service — something most of our competitors do not have. Engineers with fifteen to twenty years of experience, the right certifications, and the discipline to work safely in harsh industrial environments, around high-voltage systems and valuable production equipment. The OT team designs and specifies the physical deployment; our field engineers execute it. For the customer, that means one accountable team from design to the wrench on the panel.
Managed Services & Operations
Our group-wide operations capability runs the systems we build — across OT, AI, infrastructure, and cybersecurity — to defined service levels, with a single point of accountability. If the customer wants one number to call when something on the plant floor goes wrong, and one integrated team watching the whole stack, this is where it lives.
OT cybersecurity and compliance.
We treat OT cybersecurity as inseparable from OT digitisation. You cannot safely connect data, integrate systems, or automate processes without addressing the security of what you are building on. That conviction shapes the entire approach: the Layer 1 assessment reads digitisation state and cybersecurity exposure together, and Advanced OT opens every cybersecurity conversation that follows.
On regulation, the picture across our region is real and moving. NIS2 is being transposed and enforced across the countries we operate in, and OT environments increasingly fall in scope. We do not lead with regulation as a fear tactic — we lead with security as a prerequisite for any serious OT investment. What we bring is depth: people who genuinely understand the standards and the operational reality behind them, and who stand alongside the customer to build an environment that is genuinely compliant, not certified on paper. The areas we advise on most often:
IEC 62443 alignment
The foundational OT cybersecurity standard. Zone and conduit architecture, security levels for OT systems, secure development lifecycle for the integrations we build. We are working toward the IEC 62443-2-4 system integrator certification as a group capability.
NIS2 readiness — where it applies
Mapping Article 21 requirements to OT environments. Asset inventory, network segmentation, incident response, supply chain security. Aligned with the GRC team's broader NIS2 work for clients in scope.
ISO frameworks & standards depth
ISO 27001 for information security, ISO 20000 for service management, and TISAX for automotive-sector supply chains — mapped onto the OT environment. We bring people who understand both the standards and how the customer's operation actually runs.
Sector-specific OT standards
IEC 61850 for electrical substations and energy. Sector regulations for water, district heating, and critical infrastructure. The standards that determine whether the customer is allowed to put a system in production.
OT cybersecurity engineering
Network segmentation, perimeter firewalling and zone enforcement, OT-specific visibility (Nozomi, Cisco Cyber Vision, Nebula for fully isolated OT environments where agent-based or span-port monitoring is not viable), threat intelligence and incident response — security engineering delivered by people who understand the OT environment it has to protect.
OT engineer certifications
ISA/IEC 62443 IC32 (Fundamentals) for the team. ISA IC48 Fast Track for architects on the path to ISA/IEC 62443 Expert. SANS ICS tracks for engineers touching OT networks. Vendor-specific certifications for the platforms and products we partner on.
One thing we want to be honest about up front. OT cybersecurity readiness and NIS2 readiness are not products we can hand over in a box. They are processes, procedures, and operational decisions that only the customer can own — because they describe how the customer's organisation actually works, and only the customer can change that. Our role is to assess, advise, design the technical architecture, deliver the engineering through our sibling practice, and stand alongside the customer through the work. We are deliberate about this. There are providers in our region who will sell a certificate in weeks with no real organisational change behind it; we will not.
You cannot safely advance OT without addressing the security of what you are building on.
Any industry where OT matters.
The OT practice is not confined to a fixed list of industries. Wherever there are sensors, controllers, and physical processes that can be measured, optimised, or automated, we are willing to invest, understand how the operation works, and deliver a solution that fits.
Eastern Europe is becoming a nearshoring manufacturing hub. A meaningful portion of the next decade of regional growth will come from corporate environments that depend on operational technology — and the demographic reality of our region means those environments cannot rely solely on people. They will rely on technology to control cost, hold quality, and run reliably. This is the long market we are positioning for, and physical AI — AI that perceives and acts in physical environments — is the longer horizon beyond it.
What our infrastructure heritage gives us is a working understanding of how organisations in this region actually operate. The regulatory reality, the security posture, the tolerance for change, the systems they already depend on, the politics of procurement, the patience of the operations teams, the realities of budgets. Twenty-five years of serving them teaches you these things. We have learned, and that knowledge is the reason an OT engagement is more than a technical project for us — it is a relationship that can grow with the customer at the pace they want.
Where we see the clearest demand today.
Manufacturing — discrete and process. Energy production — from solar parks to district heating to electrical substations. Water production and treatment. Agriculture, where Eastern Europe has a deep presence and the technology gap is real. Logistics and warehousing — where indoor location intelligence pairs naturally with operational tracking. Critical infrastructure operators, where regulation and resilience matter. These are not the only industries; they are the ones where the conversation is already happening in our region.
Mid-market and smaller industrial operators
Many of the OT customers in our region are not the largest industrial enterprises — they are mid-sized manufacturers, regional utilities, single-site operators, and smaller industrial firms. The DIY-first approach is built for exactly this audience. If you have been hesitant to approach a system integrator because the platform pitches you have seen so far are out of your budget — don't be. We start small, prove the case on your site, and scale only what works.
How we work.
Every engagement follows a recognisable pattern, adapted to the scope and scale of the work. Most clients start at step one and grow into the rest at their own pace.
Assess
Layer 1 of the practice. Site walkthrough, asset and network mapping, digitisation state, cybersecurity exposure. Output is a living model and a prioritised roadmap.
Prove
A four-to-eight-week pilot on a single use case. DIY components and open-source stack where they fit. Real data, real outcomes, measured against what the customer cares about.
Build
The production system — engineered to scale, secured to standard, integrated with the enterprise systems already in place. Layers 2 through 4 of the portfolio, plus any of the parallel edge intelligence capabilities.
Adopt
Training, change management, operator handover, and the structured adoption support that makes the difference between a system that gets used and one that gets bypassed.
Operate
Monitoring, maintenance, model and platform updates, cost management, and continuous improvement. Delivered jointly with our Managed Services & Operations team. OT systems drift; ours are watched.
Our engagement model favours depth of integration over vendor lock-in. We aim to be the partner the customer chooses to stay with because we keep delivering — not because they cannot leave.
Common questions, direct answers.
Direct answers to the questions clients most often ask before they engage. If yours is not here, ask us — we will answer it the same way.
What does the Advanced OT Solutions practice actually do?
We help organisations turn industrial operational technology into measurable business outcomes. The practice covers four sequential layers — assessment of current OT and cybersecurity state; data collection from existing equipment plus sensor augmentation where data is missing; visualisation and integration of the data into enterprise systems; and control, actuation, and closed-loop optimisation — together with a parallel set of advanced edge intelligence capabilities including edge AI vision on fixed cameras and drones, custom low-code OT projects, and indoor location intelligence. We are multi-vendor, we start small with DIY components and open-source platforms where they fit, and we scale into industrial-grade as the customer is ready.
Where do most OT engagements start?
Most engagements start at Layer 1 — the assessment. A structured visit to the customer's site that maps current digitisation state and current cybersecurity exposure in one engagement, and produces a prioritised digitisation roadmap. From there, customers move up the layers — data collection, visualisation, control — at the pace that fits their budget and ambition. The assessment is priced as a fixed-fee package by complexity (small site, multi-site, enterprise), so customers know what they are buying before they buy it.
Do you only work with large industrial customers?
No. The DIY-first approach is built for mid-market and smaller industrial operators in particular. Many of our regional customers cannot justify the capital expenditure that a large industrial vendor's platform requires, and we are not in the business of selling them shelfware. We can prove a use case on Raspberry Pi, ESP32, and open-source software for a fraction of the cost of an industrial platform — and then scale into Zenon or industrial-grade equipment when the customer is ready. Larger industrial customers are welcome, but they are not the only audience.
Which OT platforms and vendors do you work with?
For SCADA/HMI we work across four tracks: COPA-DATA Zenon for regulated verticals where IEC 61850 and IEC 62443 compliance matter, a flexible mid-market SCADA/HMI platform for fast-changing manufacturing, a fully open-source stack (MQTT, Node-RED, InfluxDB, Grafana) for proofs of concept and cost-sensitive deployments, and custom low-code OT for niche, non-enterprise needs. Beyond SCADA/HMI we work with NVIDIA for edge AI compute, are in negotiation with Zebra for indoor location intelligence, and are evaluating a growing set of smart camera and drone vendors for the edge intelligence stack. For sensors, edge devices, and components we work across a broad ecosystem and choose what fits the use case — we are not locked into any single vendor's catalogue.
How do you handle OT cybersecurity?
Securing an OT environment is not the same as securing IT — a security design built without real OT understanding protects the wrong things and breaks the right ones. Our advantage is that deep OT know-how and deep cybersecurity know-how live in the same group: engineers who understand the plant, the protocols, and the process, paired with security expertise across network segmentation, zone firewalling, identity, OT-specific visibility tooling (Nozomi, Cisco Cyber Vision, Nebula for isolated OT), threat intelligence, and incident response. We treat security as inseparable from digitisation: the Layer 1 assessment reads digitisation state and security exposure together, because you cannot safely advance OT without knowing what you are building on.
What about NIS2 — is it a real driver?
NIS2 is being transposed and enforced across the countries we operate in, and OT environments increasingly fall in scope; headline fines are significant. We do not lead with NIS2 as a fear tactic, though — we lead with security as a prerequisite for any serious OT investment, because that holds regardless of where regulation has landed. What we bring is depth: people who understand NIS2, the IEC 62443 family, IEC 61850, and the ISO frameworks (ISO 27001, ISO 20000) and TISAX — and who can help design and build an environment that is genuinely compliant rather than certified on paper.
Can you really build with Raspberry Pi and ESP32?
Yes — for the right use cases, deliberately. The DIY mentality is a real part of how the practice operates. The team has been chosen specifically for the ability to source components, harden them for production use, and build solutions that work reliably without industrial-grade price tags. We are not pretending Raspberry Pi is the right choice for an electrical substation, or that ESP32 belongs in a regulated water treatment facility — those environments need industrial equipment and we deliver it. But for a mid-market manufacturer proving a defect-detection idea on a single packaging line, or a smaller utility starting to instrument its first asset, DIY components with appropriate security and open-source software are often the right answer. The customer pays for our engineering; the instruments are inexpensive — and when the use case proves out, we grow it into mid-market and industrial-grade systems.
Do you do edge AI vision — and is it just for manufacturing?
Yes, on two platforms — fixed cameras and autonomous drones — and across a wider set of use cases than manufacturing. Fixed cameras: quality inspection on production lines, defect detection, people counting for safety compliance, PPE detection, anomaly detection on physical assets. Drones: infrastructure inspection (pipelines, power lines, towers), construction monitoring, warehouse management, perimeter security. The technology stack centres on NVIDIA Jetson for edge compute, smart cameras with onboard inference (FLIR, Basler, Axis under evaluation), and drone platforms — Skydio, DJI, or custom builds — that we treat as flying CV systems. Our AI & Software Engineering colleagues build and validate the models; we deploy the hardware, place the cameras, integrate the drone fleet, and connect the inference output to the customer's operational systems — one team, one accountable delivery.
What is physical AI, and is it real yet?
Physical AI is the broader frontier where AI perceives and acts in physical environments — from smart manufacturing through autonomous logistics to robotics. We do not expect a big bang here in a two-year window; the transition will be gradual over five to ten years, unfolding industry by industry. What we believe is that system integrators sit in the sweet spot for that transition — close enough to the physical infrastructure to deploy intelligence where it lives, and broad enough across IT to integrate it with the rest of the business. Advanced OT Solutions is the practice through which TBS positions for that wave. The work today — sensors, edge AI, drones, closed-loop optimisation — is laying the foundations.
Do you have a managed service for OT systems?
Yes. Once an OT system is in production — sensors collecting, dashboards live, control loops running, edge AI inference operating — it cannot be left alone. Models drift, sensors fail, costs need watching, security posture needs maintaining. Our managed service offering is delivered together with our group-wide Managed Services & Operations team and covers monitoring, maintenance, platform and model updates, cost management, and continuous improvement. The customer can engage us to co-operate alongside their team, to operate the system entirely as a managed service, or to advise on operations the customer will run themselves.
In which countries do you operate?
We operate across six countries in Central and South-East Europe — Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia — with active expansion into Western Europe through planned acquisitions. We deliver to multi-country clients from a single integrated team. Our headquarters is in Sofia, Bulgaria.
How do I get started?
Email [email protected] or use the contact form on this page to request a thirty-minute conversation with one of our practice leads. Most engagements start with that conversation, followed by a Layer 1 assessment scoped to the customer's site. We will give you a clear read on what is realistic, where to start, and what it will take. There is no obligation and no charge for the conversation.
Reasons to work with us.
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01
Bridge between the plant floor and the boardroom. We speak both languages — the OT engineer's protocols and the CIO's enterprise architecture. Most firms in the region speak one or the other. We have spent twenty-five years operating across the full IT stack, and we have deliberately built the OT practice on top of that heritage.
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02
DIY-first when it fits. We can prove an OT use case on Raspberry Pi, ESP32, and open-source software — properly secured, properly engineered — before the customer commits to industrial-grade hardware. The DIY mentality is not a fallback for cheap deals; it is the entry point for the relationships that grow.
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03
Genuinely multi-vendor. Four SCADA/HMI tracks. A broad ecosystem of edge, sensor, and component vendors. No single vendor's commercial incentives shape our recommendations. The right answer today is not the right answer in eighteen months, and our job is to know the difference.
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04
End-to-end through one relationship. The OT practice owns the physical edge. Our sibling AI & Software Engineering practice owns the intelligence layer. Our sibling Infrastructure & Cybersecurity practice owns the networks, cloud, and security delivery. Together we cover every layer a real industrial digitisation programme needs — and the customer only ever deals with one partner.
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05
Honest consultancy. We tell customers the pros, the cons, the price, and the trade-offs. We recommend what is right for them — not what is most profitable for us in a single transaction. We will say "this is not the right time for that platform" when it is true. This is how we earn the next conversation, and the one after that.
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06
Regional reach, consistent delivery. Operations in six Central and South-East European countries, a single engineering culture, and the ability to serve multi-country clients from one partner. Western European expansion underway.
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07
Publicly traded, long-standing. A quarter of a century in business. Transparent governance. The kind of partner still here to support the system we built five or ten years from now.
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08
Our own field-engineering service. Most of our competitors do not have one. Engineers with fifteen to twenty years of experience, the right certifications, and the discipline to work safely in harsh industrial environments around high-voltage systems and valuable equipment. The OT team designs; our field engineers execute — one accountable team from design to the panel.
Practice leadership.
Start with a thirty-minute conversation.
Tell us where you are today and where you want to be in twelve to eighteen months. Thirty minutes with one of our practice leads will give you a clear read on what is realistic for your site, where to start, and what it will take. The Layer 1 assessment usually follows.
Request a meeting →