Containers Without the Complexity: Bringing IT Tools to the Factory Floor
Meet PLCnext Technology, a networking powerhouse bridging IT and OT with ease. Powered by open Linux-based controllers, it supports industrial protocols like OPC UA, MQTT, PROFINET, and PROFIBUS and various more protocols, giving your machines full communication fluency across legacy and modern systems alike. From edge to cloud, PLCnext Technology keeps your data flowing seamlessly.
Explore PLCnext TechnologyIn this episode of Unplugged: An IIoT Podcast, hosts Phil Seboa and Ed Fuentes sit down with Neil Cresswell, founder and CEO of Portainer, to talk about how containerization is reshaping the factory floor. From the origins of Portainer as an IT tool to its growing adoption across industrial environments, Neil shares why containers matter for OT, how to get started without overwhelming your team, and where AI and edge computing are taking the industry next.
Portainer started in 2016 as a way to help IT generalists get comfortable with Docker and Kubernetes. The idea was simple: these technologies were powerful but too complex for anyone outside a specialist DevOps role. Neil and his team built an intuitive interface that let people manage containers without memorizing command-line syntax.
What they didn't expect was the organic pickup from the industrial sector. "We started to get pretty good organic pickup from the industrial sector," Neil explains. "They were like, hey, we can actually start using this IT technology, even though we're not actually IT folk." That organic demand led Portainer to split into two business units: one for enterprise IT and one specifically for industrial and OT users, each addressing fundamentally different priorities. IT wants dynamic, self-healing systems. OT wants systems that keep the plant running.
Containerization changes how applications run on machines. Instead of installing software that leaves permanent traces on a device, containers are self-contained bundles that leave no footprint. You can run multiple versions simultaneously, upgrade without risk by spinning up a new version alongside the old one, and roll back instantly if something goes wrong. "You can't do that when you're installing apps," Neil says. "So it's a bit of a game changer."
In industrial settings, the software landscape has shifted from proprietary systems that ran untouched for a decade to open platforms built on MQTT, OPC UA, and other standards. These modern stacks are shipped by vendors in containers, which means factories adopting new software are adopting containers whether they planned to or not. "You can't deploy an MQTT broker today and not touch it for 10 years," Neil points out. "You've got to patch it and upgrade it on a regular basis."
The conversation turns to why factories are modernizing in the first place: global competition. Neil describes a manufacturing landscape where regional insulation is gone. "There's actually one manufacturing and it's called the world," he says. Companies can manufacture anywhere for the lowest price at acceptable quality levels.
The United States is investing heavily to reshore manufacturing, but the challenge is doing so without tripling costs. Europe faces similar pressure to remain competitive against Asian markets with significantly lower labor costs. Even the advantage of small-batch domestic manufacturing is eroding. Fully automated CNC machinery and 3D printing mean factories in China can handle nearly any order size without a cost penalty, and their quality, once dismissed, now rivals domestic output. "That's gone now," Neil says of the old perception. "Their quality probably rivals that of some domestic manufacturers."
Neil shares examples that illustrate what containerized applications make possible. John Deere has equipped tractors with front-mounted cameras and rear-mounted lasers that identify and destroy weeds in real time, eliminating the need for pesticides entirely. An irrigation company has developed ground probes that communicate with boom sprayers, shutting off individual jets when the soil beneath them is already moist, resulting in a 30% reduction in water usage.
Quality control is another area seeing transformation. Sensors on factory tools can detect issues like excess torque on a screwdriver, flagging a defective assembly before it reaches QA checkpoints further down the line. AI-powered vision systems monitor production in real time. "This stuff is absolutely transformational," Neil says. All of it runs on containers, but the technology itself is beside the point. "Could they deploy those cool projects without containers? Absolutely not. But the projects that they're enabling, oh my god."
When asked how listeners should get started, Neil is direct: skip the grand vision and start small. "Don't try and go in there with these grandiose claims that give me a million dollars and I'll solve all the problems," he advises. Instead, go to the plant floor, sit in the cafeteria, and ask operators what their biggest headaches are. Solve that one problem. Then solve another. Build up credibility through tangible wins before asking for a larger budget.
For individual learning, Neil recommends building a home lab with inexpensive hardware like Raspberry Pis or secondhand NVIDIA Jetson devices. Portainer is free for home lab environments, so there is no cost barrier to experimenting. "Get the software, deploy some stuff, see what it does, and then build up confidence," he says. That personal investment pays off when it is time to solve real problems on the factory floor.
The future Neil envisions is one where containers become invisible. Firmware on industrial devices will ship with embedded container runtimes as standard, and users will simply deploy applications from a catalog without ever knowing containers are involved. "The technology is amazing but completely and utterly irrelevant," he says.
AI at the edge is also accelerating. Processing needs to happen locally when decisions must be made in seconds, like the John Deere tractor that has one second between camera detection and laser firing. Expect to see more AI-enabled hardware pushed to the factory floor, running inference models locally while a central coordinator manages updates and policies. Combined with data historians and AI query layers that can trace a production drop all the way back to a vacuum leak on a single machine, the industrial landscape is entering a new era of intelligent, responsive operations.
Neil Cresswell is the founder and CEO of Portainer, a container management platform used in over 170 countries. Based in New Zealand, Neil brings more than 20 years of experience in IT infrastructure, including roles as a consultant, CIO, and public cloud operator. Under his leadership, Portainer has expanded from an open-source IT tool into a commercial platform serving both enterprise and industrial markets, with its software downloaded over 3.5 billion times worldwide.
PLCnext Technology is the open ecosystem for industrial automation from Phoenix Contact. It brings together open hardware, modular engineering software, a global community, and a digital software marketplace to bridge the worlds of IT and OT.
Digitalization and globalization are placing new demands on industrial automation. The precisely tailored design of the open automation system is just as important as flexible, modular expansion. In addition to standard programming of PLC systems in accordance with IEC 61131-3, parallel programming and the combination of programming languages such as C/C++, C#, and Matlab® Simulink® in real time is also possible with PLCnext Control. Accelerate your application development process with the free basic version of PLCnext Engineer, or use your familiar programming environment.
With simple cloud integration, the option to use open source software, and the ever-expanding expertise of the PLCnext Community, you will benefit from new forms of collaboration. The resulting solution apps, software modules, runtime systems, and function extensions are available in the PLCnext Store and save an enormous amount of time and money when creating applications. This makes PLCnext Technology the ideal ecosystem for your modern automation challenge.
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