Monthly Archives: January 2019

Are PTC and Rockwell Automation Delivering the Connected Enterprise?

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In June 2018 we saw that Rockwell Automation (ROK) made a $1 Billion investment into PTC that will give Rockwell just under a 9% ownership interest in PTC. I decided to wait to look at this. Now here is the time for a review eight months later.

I have made initial snapshots (all separate links) on Schneider Electric, Bosch, GE, Siemens, ABB,  Alibaba and Baidu to look a little deeper at their platform offerings. I still have to dig into Azure and AWS sometime but this partnership of a leading software provider in the IoT space and Rockwell, dedicated to industrial automation takes precedence, as my primary focus is on platforms and ecosystems in business IIoT.

Rockwell had not responded up to this point in a strategic way to the very strong pushes, led by their largest competitor, Siemens on IIoT platforms. Siemens has been building their Mindsphere offering in their own unique purposeful ways.

This move and partnership between Rockwell and PTC might change the game significantly. PTC will be supplying a real IIoT backbone of platform components and are rapidly delivering an integrated industrial digitalization solution.

Slapping $1 billion on the table really does potentially transform both businesses. Continue reading →

Are we learning the lessons in the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

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https://www.weforum.org/events

So it is that wonderful time of year. Business Leaders mix with other Global Leaders, Influencers and those that want to move and shake present opinion, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland from 22nd to 25th January 2019. Now I love this event. The deluge of fresh reports on all things concerning our leaders thinking come flooding out, all hoping to be read and understood in their seriousness.

You have to apply “selective reading” but this year the main theme is Globalization 4.0. It strikes me the challenges within the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) have shifted to this new emerging theme of Globalization 4.0. So after I and many, many others have got used to one revolution we seem to have merged this into another. The argument is simple, the condition of the planet, a changing multipolar international order, and rising inequality are shifting the goal posts. If we do not gather around the need for changing the deteriating human condition and reducing the rapidily depleted natual resources that we have at our disposal, by taking action at corporate, national and international level we are, can I say it, “simply fried”? Globalization4.0 is somehow trying to scope out the issues, for heading this off. Well, maybe! Continue reading →