Two deep-dive conversations with the people who built Node-RED and the platform that takes it to production. Honest talk about IT/OT integration, brownfield realities, and the future of industrial automation.
Discover FlowFuse →Two conversations. One platform. The real story behind Node-RED in production.
Nick O'Leary — the engineer who built Node-RED at IBM Research and co-founded FlowFuse — joins Phil and Ed to walk through how Node-RED became the go-to platform for industrial data management. From the origins of low-code visual programming to FlowFuse's role as the managed production layer, Nick explains why these tools are built specifically for industrial environments where IT and OT teams need to collaborate. A foundational episode for understanding why FlowFuse exists.
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ZJ van de Weg, CEO of FlowFuse, joins Phil and Ed to unpack the real challenges of scaling Node-RED from proof-of-concept to production across dozens of industrial sites. With a background spanning open source development and hyper-scale ops at GitLab, ZJ brings a practitioner's perspective on why low-code tools are the right bridge between IT and OT teams — and where AI fits (and where it doesn't) in live manufacturing environments.
Read the episode →Nick O'Leary built Node-RED at IBM and co-founded FlowFuse. Here's what stuck.
"It started as a proof of concept at IBM, aimed at visualizing MQTT data. We never imagined it would grow into what it is today."
"The community often lacked the resources to address scaling issues adequately, pushing companies to devise their own solutions. That gap is exactly what FlowFuse was built to close."
"FlowFuse provides enterprise support for Node-RED, contributing significantly to its development and maintaining strong ties with the community."
"Node-RED's community has significantly shaped its evolution and continues to provide vital feedback and contributions — that's the engine behind everything."
"AI tools help in understanding and generating insights from data. The FlowFuse Assistant lets users describe what they want and generates the function node automatically."
Five verified quotes from Episode 43 — the words that stuck.
"The sweet spot so far has been low code just because it has the tools they need. From an OT perspective, if you know how to use Excel, you can now get the data from your machines and publish that to the rest of your architecture."
"You have two teams and both have a knowledge gap. Me with an IT background, every time I touch the PLC, I feel like I should have studied this; it should have taken me three or four years."
"Within 10 minutes you can actually extract the data from industrial hardware."
"If you build something and it works now, you want it to work for the next decade. So as a company, we now certify it, we make sure that you have very limited maintenance on those nodes for the next 10 years."
"Almost 99% of our customers are brownfield, which means you just got to be super flexible."
Jump straight to the most valuable parts of the conversation. Hit play on Spotify or YouTube, then scrub to the timestamp.
"The sweet spot so far has been low code just because it has the tools they need. From an OT perspective, if you know how…"
Listen in Episode 43 →"You have two teams and both have a knowledge gap. Me with an IT background, every time I touch the PLC, I feel like I sh…"
Listen in Episode 43 →"Within 10 minutes you can actually extract the data from industrial hardware.…"
Listen in Episode 43 →"If you build something and it works now, you want it to work for the next decade. So as a company, we now certify it, we…"
Listen in Episode 43 →FlowFuse is the industrial application platform built for OT engineers who need reliability, flexibility, and low-code speed. Start a free trial or talk to the team.
Visit flowfuse.com →Both FlowFuse conversations — available everywhere you listen.
The origin story of Node-RED and how FlowFuse turns it into an enterprise-grade industrial platform.
Scaling Node-RED from pilot to production across brownfield sites — the hard-won lessons from FlowFuse CEO ZJ van de Weg.