Most enterprise software operates in a forgiving environment. If a SaaS product goes down for five minutes, users complain on Twitter and move on. If a financial trading platform glitches, there are regulatory consequences but rarely physical ones.
Critical infrastructure software operates in a fundamentally different reality.
The Consequences Are Physical
When we talk about critical infrastructure—power grids, water treatment, transport networks, telecommunications—we're talking about systems where software failures can cascade into the physical world. A misconfigured SCADA system doesn't just show an error message; it can cause equipment damage, environmental harm, or endanger human life.
This changes everything about how you build software.
The standard Silicon Valley playbook of "move fast and break things" becomes actively dangerous. The agile principle of "working software over comprehensive documentation" collides with regulatory requirements for exhaustive audit trails. The DevOps ideal of continuous deployment clashes with change management processes that exist for very good reasons.
Regulatory Reality
Every critical infrastructure sector operates under specific regulatory frameworks. Energy has AEMO and the National Electricity Rules. Water has state-based health and safety requirements. Telecommunications has the TSSR. Defence has entirely separate classification requirements.
These aren't bureaucratic obstacles to be worked around—they're the operating context that any software must accommodate. A vendor who sees compliance as a checkbox exercise rather than a design constraint will build software that creates more problems than it solves.
The Air-Gap Challenge
Many critical infrastructure environments maintain air-gapped networks—systems that are physically isolated from the internet. This isn't paranoia; it's a reasonable response to the reality that nation-state actors actively target these systems.
For software vendors accustomed to cloud-native architectures, this creates fundamental challenges:
- No automatic updates
- No cloud-based telemetry
- No SaaS licensing models
- No remote support access
Building for air-gapped environments requires rethinking assumptions baked into modern software development from the ground up.
Operational Technology Culture
IT and OT (Operational Technology) cultures have different values, different risk tolerances, and different definitions of success. IT prioritises availability and speed of change. OT prioritises safety and stability. These aren't wrong priorities—they're appropriate responses to different operational contexts.
Software that succeeds in critical infrastructure environments respects this cultural reality. It doesn't try to impose IT-centric workflows on OT environments. It doesn't assume that "digital transformation" means making OT look more like IT.
The Muon Approach
At Muon Group, we build for these constraints from the beginning, not as an afterthought. Our founders have spent careers in these environments—building data centres, securing energy management systems, working in the spaces where software meets physical infrastructure.
This isn't a market we're trying to enter. It's the environment we come from.