Siemens Xcelerator the new Digital Business Platform, launched 29th July 2022

Today, 29th June 2022, Siemens launched Siemens Xcelerator across its entire portfolio to accelerate digital transformation and value creation for customers of all sizes in industry, buildings, grids and mobility. The business platform makes digital transformation easier, faster and scalable.

Xcelerator is an open digital business platform, that will enable hardware, software and digital services from across all of Siemen’s portfolios and also will bring in certified third parties, to provide a growing ecosystem of partners, provide an evolving marketplace to accelerate the digital transformation and provide interactions and transactions between customers, partners and developers. The really big story is the moving toward an Industrial Metaverse through the power of this Xcelerator platform and its future potential in a new exciting partnership with NVIDIA.

This is a step-by-step transformational journey

Roland Busch, President and CEO of Siemens AG remarked Xcelerator “is the logical next step in the implementation of our digitalization strategy to enable even faster innovation and value creation. Siemens Xcelerator brings the power of our focused technology company together with a thriving ecosystem of technology partners. We are joining together to simplify digital transformation so that customers of all sizes can benefit at speed and scale.”

He went on to state “Siemens Xcelerator will make it easier than ever before for companies to navigate digital transformation – faster and at scale. By combining the real and the digital worlds across operational and information technology, we empower customers and partners to boost productivity, competitiveness and scale up innovations.”

“Our leading portfolio is transformed towards more open applications, with more cloud-based and as-a-service solutions and IoT-enabled hardware that can be constantly upgraded. At the same time, the collaboration will reach a new level with a growing ecosystem of partners.”

Siemens generated Euro 62.3 billion in revenue in fiscal 2021, employing around 303,000 employees worldwide that provides solutions to more resource-efficient factories, resilient supply chains, and smarter buildings and grids, to cleaner and more comfortable transportation as well as advanced healthcare. Siemens states very clearly it creates technology with purpose, adding real value for customers.

What Siemens Xcelerator comprises and will move towards achieving

Xcelerator is a curated portfolio, a growing ecosystem and an evolving marketplace that will build out over the coming months and years. The complexity of this transformation is huge. and will be taken step by step.

It is a very big deal with the commitment of “Siemens will transform its entire portfolio of hardware and software to become modular, cloud-connected and built on standard application programming interfaces (APIs). The highest standards and value for all parties will be ensured by strong technical and commercial governance principles. Siemens and third-party offerings will adhere to the design principles of interoperability, flexibility, openness and as-a-service”

In my view, to take their “entire leading portfolio and transform it towards more open applications, with more cloud-based and as-a-service solutions and IoT-enabled hardware that can be constantly upgraded. At the same time, the collaboration will reach a new level with a growing ecosystem of partners.” is a massive undertaking when you adhere to these design principles of offering interoperability, flexibility, openness and as-a-service.

The launch event was chock full of examples, of industrial leaders from Science & Technology, Space Exploration, Transport, Vehicles, and Grid providers all giving their view of a future, a future of collaborations

Please visit the launch site here where it provides much of the different launch material from today’s event.

The need to replicate and learn

A real message was the ambition through Xcelerator is to replicate and learn, to gain from one set of experiences and challenges, in one industry, or a building or grid solution and scale that out, not so much a plug and play but a plug & run. The ability to optimise the end-to-end system value.

During the launch event, three parts of the transformation being undertaken were additionally announced.

• Launch of new Building X end-to-end smart building Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) suite
  • Planned acquisition of Brightly Software will accelerate growth in digital buildings complementing Siemens’ smart building portfolio
  • Partner ecosystem grows through industrial metaverse partnership with NVIDIA for physics-based, immersive digital twin development

New SaaS launch with Building X kicking this off

Siemens Smart Infrastructure has launched Building X, a new smart building suite that is open, interoperable and fully cloud-based. The suite is the first next-generation offering built on the design principles of Siemens Xcelerator, an open digital business platform launched today to accelerate digital transformation and value creation across industry, transportation, grids and buildings. The “X” stands for delivering these design principles of offering interoperability, flexibility, openness and as-a-service.

Explaining Building X

Building X addresses the challenges of various stakeholders, including building users, investors, real estate companies and facility managers. It acts as a single source of truth to eliminate complexity and supports net-zero targets. Stakeholders can now digitize and use their building data from various sources, disciplines and systems on one single platform, Building X.

This enables a seamless user experience and the integration of their existing software and ecosystem, including third-party applications, through vendor-agnostic connectivity and open application programming interfaces (APIs). The suite offers modular, AI-enabled applications, and built-in cyber security. It also facilitates co-creation with customers and partners to address their challenges faster, thanks to the openness and cloud technology, which means digital transformation can be achieved easier, faster and at scale.

* I will pick up on this in a separate post as it brings to life the modular, scalable, open building suite that is designed to seamlessly integrate building systems to eliminate current complexity and enables the combination of sustainability goals and accelerating solutions to reach net-zero buildings.

Secondly, to build out Building X on Monday, June 27, 2022, Siemens announced the agreement to purchase Brightly Software, a leading U.S.-based asset and maintenance management software company. The acquisition will add Brightly‘s well-established capabilities across key sectors to Siemens’ digital and software know-how in buildings. It will be an additional core element of the Siemens Xcelerator for Buildings portfolio.

Thirdly a partnership announcement that continues to build out the Ecosystem network of Siemens with the announcement that with NVIDIA the plan is for a new era of immersive digital twin technology

Siemens will be making a considerable expansion to its Ecosystem of partners. It is committing significantly to joining forces and growing a strong partner ecosystem, building on existing strategic partnerships including Accenture, Atos, AWS, Bentley, Microsoft and SAP. The intention is to expand the partner ecosystem with multiple small, medium and large companies to solve problems by finding the right partnership solutions.

NVIDIA is the first major partnership agreement under the Siemens Xcelerator umbrella. The two companies today announced an expansion of their partnership to enable the industrial metaverse and increase the use of AI-driven digital twin technology that will help bring industrial automation to a new level. As the first step in this collaboration, the companies plan to connect Siemens Xcelerator, the open digital business platform and NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for 3D design and collaboration. This will enable an industrial metaverse with physics-based digital models from Siemens and AI-enabled, physically accurate, real-time simulation from NVIDIA where companies make decisions faster and with increased confidence.

Here the ambition of building out the Industrial Metaverse begins to come to life. The power of having a digital twin to enable the real and virtual worlds to come together, to be simulated, to be tested, and designed before the actual real world. The exciting partnership offers a significant change to how the digital transformation will travel.

Picking up in the press release and within the event solutions for IIoT are building at a pace equally

A further part of the event mentions that Siemens also plans to integrate its industrial internet of things (IIoT) solutions for industry as Industrial Operations X, which brings together solutions and applications from the sensor to edge to cloud, IoT as-a-service and low code development capabilities, as well as a wide range of ready-to-use-apps. This will enable the fusion of data from the real world of automation with the digital world of information technology, enriched by Siemens’ comprehensive vertical IT/ OT integration knowledge and capabilities.

The key here, like all that Xcelerator is planning to do, finding solutions with partners that set about breaking down data silos and customer challenges to help companies to increase their performance, productivity, flexibility and sustainability. That alone is not a small deal it is the ability to enable faster innovation and value creation, to transform and why Xcelerator becomes the connector and power to enable the realization of Siemens being a focused technology company together in a thriving ecosystem of technology partners.

The beginning of a very different Siemens dawned today

The outcome for me is that today’s event begins the transformation of a very different business model for Siemens, one that moves from selling products to selling solutions and outcomes that the customer wants. If they want a box, product, or machine, then fine but if they want a complete solution then Siemens and its partners can find and offer the solution.

I want to absorb the multiple points of what was present here, it was arguable massive in ambition but so is the digital transition. Siemens has put a clear stake in the ground in transforming themselves and providing this Xcelerator platform that brings their portfolio (and others) around a growing Ecosystem and providing a growing marketplace of solutions, not products, to the challenges of making a step change within the industrial digital transformation

Please visit the Siemens site for all the different press releases relating to today’s event and this link to the specific launch page.

Disclaimer: This article is published in partnership with Siemens. Siemens is paying for my engagement, not for promotional purposes. Opinions are my own