At the Siemens Digital Enterprise Virtual Experience, held in the Hannover Messe 2021 week, entitled “Infinite opportunities from infinite data”, one specific panel discussion stood out.

When you have three leading experts offering insights into a new world of industrial possibilities, you do expect some exciting opinions from each of these leaders in their specialized area.  You hope and get some fascinating insights.

The discussion was between Rainer Brehm, CEO Siemens Digital Industries Factory Automation, Raymond Kok, Senior Vice President, Cloud Application Solutions and Derek Roos, the Co-founder and CEO of Mendix, the low-code application and development platform, facilitated by Sebastian Wolf, the Senior Marketing Director for Siemens MindSphere.

IT and OT have been notoriously hard to bring together, can this be a game-changer?

Although there have been significant developments in recent years, far too many solutions and individual knowledge understanding stay in silos. Siemens’ approach is to bring together the virtual and real worlds, recognizing the “play of the infinity loop” to optimize and simulate the digital world as applied in the real world to learn.

This panel discussed how this solution would work in this real world to optimize its digital twin model and bring together the domain expert (OT) with the digital aspect (IT). This digital model approach will bring completely new opportunities in the advancement of manufacturing, advancing processes as manufacturers are looking to ride the next S curve of productivity.

Today many manufacturers still have no comprehensive plan for digitalizing their operations. As the recent crisis showed, it was flexible, connected, and digitally ready manufacturers who were flexible and highly adaptive to react, respond, keep operating, and even raise their production to meet radically different demands.

Siemens is not just a provider of digital solutions.

Its history and reputation are in building, designing and producing technology solutions for customers worldwide. The term “eating your own dogfood,” in the software industry, comes to mind here, means using the code you’re developing for your own daily needs: basically, being a user as well as a developer.

As advancements are made, it offers customers new solutions on what can they now do they could not do before. As IoT connects the physical world, then to the IT world, you can empower a large community of developers (IT / OT) to evolve the business side to do new things. The interoperability potential of both unlocking workforce and domain knowledge into the (digital) mix to turn this into finding new business solutions.

So why is this important? Producers are constantly under cost pressure; customers expect personalized, high-quality, safe, healthy, affordable, and eco-friendly products. The game-changer for resolving complexity is the integration of digitalization, automation and new technologies. Batches or production runs need to be more customized, highly flexible and able to speed up development cycles from design concept to finished product to meet the rapid demand changes.

In the past production, runs were set up just to run continuously. Today that manufacturing philosophy is outdated for most industries. Rapid response is increasingly reliant on digitally connected environments. This move from “static” to “flexible” operations. They need the optimization provided by managing both in this physical and digital world to plan this and enable even more business models.

The panel suggests we are moving into a far more goal-based, not rule-based environment with the IT and OT’s combined convergence to allow their worlds to merge, enabling technologies and greater collaboration to take place.

In Siemens, their IIoT stack sits in the middle of this convergence. It brings together the edge; it provides IIoT as a service and offers visibility to all involved.  It becomes the core to transforming a digitally connected enterprise.

The key is to search for the integrated value, think big on possibilities, start small in experimentation and collective learning and then make the scaling out fast to generate the return on investments to create the impact demonstrated in this.

Today it is all about interplay.

The interplay between software and hardware, the IT and OT experts, the solution “stack” that manages, stores, and enables the simulation and optimization required of operating in the digital and physical world of infinite possibilities.

As operators start to contextualize the data, they gain insights. In unlocking data through machine learning, it brings a greater understanding to more people, from the shop floor to the top floor. It is through exploiting all these stacks (shown above)

Each manufacturing environment is unique.

It is the interoperability of technologies and solutions coming together for a common goal of delivering customer impact in the finding of new solutions to generate new business models and offer digital experiences to all involved to have a greater understanding and transparency. It is finding the integrated value and planning out the new landscape to optimize and stimulate.

Insights need to lead to action. The need is to connect data, take it and apply it in more valuable ways; this could be in process optimization, predictive maintenance. It could be in new innovative concepts, different shop floor designs combining AI, Robots, Humans to work in other, more intelligent ways.

The IT / OT convergence

Siemens is taking a holistic approach to enable your IIoT business by combining three solution stacks that offer versatile and robust industrial IoT solutions- Industrial edge, Mindsphere and Mendix. The new stack supplies speed, scalability and versatility. This solution set is following on from the recent launch of the Siemens Industrial Edge.

With Industrial Edge, you leverage machine data in real-time and at scale to improve processes. Mindsphere helps you maximize the benefits of industrial data with AI and advanced analytics in the cloud. And with Mendix, you have application development capabilities to hand, even without coding experience.

This solution set is about unlocking the interplay of the different solutions found in the solutions to transform your business into a Digital Enterprise.

The aim is to take IT technology and make it industrialized for broader connectivity, optimization, and insights.

This solution stack takes a total view from the shop floor firstly in machines, processes and data connectivity, and data from products in the field. Then along with Mindsphere, the application and cloud-based analytics with low-code application capabilities development from Mendix, it enables an integrated portfolio of software, services and application development platforms.

Where should one start in building the Digital Enterprise?  

The panel’s advice, do not overthink, get going quickly, start learning and empower your people to discover the solutions that give impact and return and making sure you remove all the unnecessary friction.

As Derek Roos nicely put it, “Remove the friction”. It is about unlocking the interplay of the different solutions found in this combined stack to help you transform your business.

This solution stack combines the two worlds of digital and domain knowledge through connecting digital to physical in the digital twin solution. Siemens makes the OT world accessible to the IT world and vice versa in intuitive ways; they become more empowered and create the future potential, more assessable and valuable.

The goal here is in unlocking and translating insights into new business value. Achieving real impact and return to enable the existing and potential new business to find new opportunities and models. The ability for clients to find a unique competitive advantage combining the two worlds of digital and physical.

Resources and links

https://new.siemens.com/global/en/company/topic-areas/digital-enterprise.html

http://www.siemens.com/industrial-iot

https://siemens.mindsphere.io/de

https://www.mendix.com

Explore your infinite possibilities now: https://sie.ag/2ReojOY

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

The post The infinite possibilities with Siemens Industrial IoT. first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

I downloaded a paper, written by Geoff Hollingworth, Head of Ericsson Cloud Marketing, Ericsson Evangelist, in collaboration with Jason Hoffman, Head of Product Area Cloud Infrastructure, Ericsson last year called “The Zero Distance World”

I came across it again this week, as I was busy re-organizing my files and references and I wanted to share parts of it, in quotes that I feel are fairly powerful

On checking, I saw that Geoff Hollingsworth has left Ericsson and when I went in search of this paper I got the message back “Page Requested, Cannot Be Found“. Annoying but let me press on and draw out some things that held my attention and why I am posting some of the points made.

Firstly we are often are told it is becoming a “zero-sum game” and so this “Zero Distance world” made me curious. So let me “pull out some points that I think resonate for me and hopefully for you.

Quote One:

“Everything exists for a reason. But most of the time we have forgotten what that reason is. To re-invent your business, you need to start with the “why” of what you do and only then consider the “how”. An opening quote from Garrett, R., (2015)
“The 10 Steps of Emotion Processing”

Quote Two:

“Distance and time are being destroyed, and we now have a total reach to both people and machines. Products (and people) that are not connected will be orphans of a cruel world if they aren’t already. Welcome to the zero distance world”

Quote Three:

“We need to start by understanding that change is moving from human to machine, from prescriptive to learning. And
then we need to understand the combined powers these enabling technologies (mobile, broadband, cloud) have on all existing systems. Yet these technologies are also not fixed. They are becoming ever more capable, at a fraction of the old price”. Quote from Desjardins, J., (2017) “Bitcoin was the best performing currency of both 2015 and 2016”, Business Insider

Quote Four:

“Preparing for a zero distance world and ever-accelerating change. This is what this paper is about – preparing for a world
of zero distance and ever-accelerating change. It primarily focuses on businesses and technology, but without forgetting individuals, societies, countries and the world at large”.

Quote Five:

“We have three main messages for people and companies that want to succeed:
1. Re-find who you are (soul)
2. Learn the new ways of winning (mind)
3. Become a digital machine (body)”

The 10 steps of emotional processing applied to digital- what really caught my attention

“The 10 Steps of Emotion Processing” [reference comes from Pair A Docks].
The 10 steps are as follows:
1. We consciously observe what we experience
2. On reflection, we notice what we did not consciously see
3. We recognize new patterns
4. We acknowledge their effects
5. We accept the consequences
6. We own what it means for us
7. We appreciate the impact to us
8. We understand what we need to understand
9. We build process to enable the adoption of the new future
10. We reframe our perspective going forward

Pair A Docks view of the different steps is:

1) Observe: Look at, watch, listen to; staying with it.

2) Notice: See, hear and sense; perceive.

3) Recognize … discern what it is in a known (previously identified) pattern.

4) Acknowledge: Be with its “is-ness,” “actual-ness,” “there-ness,” existence; synonyms: concede, grant, admit, confess.

5) Accept … that it is and align with it… noticing and rejecting any judgment or evaluation according to conscious or unconscious beliefs, ideals, rules, requirements, etc.

6) Own … what is happening in you; take responsibility for.

7) Appreciate: Be fully conscious of, aware of, detect; synonyms: esteem, prize, value; exercise wise judgment, delicate perception, keen insight.

8) Understand: Perceive the meaning of, grasp the idea of, comprehend; grasp the significance, implications, importance of, regard as firmly communicated.

9) Intercept: Feel the sensations in the body.

10) Digest: Process, metabolize, break down and discharge.

This was interpreted for this paper to bring these steps into the Business world

1  Observe –  New leaders are behind big changes, using new rules and winning
2  Notice –  The results are transformational, economically and disruptive
3  Recognize – Connected everything creates data to feed machines to augment human effectiveness and reach
4  Acknowledge –  This forces all companies to ask their “Why” question
5  Accept – And then accept the need to change
6  Own –  Where a new approach to digital is required
7  Appreciate – With next-generation digital economics
8  Understand– – New best practices are required
9  Process – And safe change requires discipline
10 Reframe – Finally accept the need to embrace, accept, and start observing again is reflected on the outside

Quote Six:

“The current transformation, the one of replacing physical with digital, is exceptionally powerful because it destroys distance rather than accommodating it. The zero distance world challenges all previous systems, even ones that have worked so well that we no longer question their existence”

Quote Seven:

“These companies (that) have operational models that capture an exponential capability increase but with linear costs and an exponential price decrease, all while maintaining value. They achieve such efficiency by removing what is not necessary and simplifying what must be there. By aggressively standardizing across all facilities, infrastructure, operations and business lines, high revenue per employee statistics become obvious rather than surprising.”

Quote Eight:

“The ones that can translate this tsunami of data into insight and action will have a massive advantage over those that cannot. And the ones that can do it the fastest will win outright. You have to ask: What will be the acceptable delay between request (need) and response (offer) in the future?”

Quote Nine:

“Building business models focused on new outcomes Next-generation digital requires the destruction of this existing entropy….From a business-model perspective, companies are moving from a focus on product to product and services, to pro-active customer support, to completely new outcomes”

Quote Ten:

“Future digital will require precision control from the edge to the core and from private to public. Can you imagine what your digital operations are going to look like? Probably not”.

Quote Eleven:

“The future requires a new kind of digital operation and infrastructure. This will be cloud-based since this is the most efficient and agile approach. However, cloud-based can mean a lot of different things. Today AWS public cloud has a very different economic performance from the results seen in the private domain. But this will change, as tomorrow both public and private cloud will be forced to deliver the same high performance economic in one seamless operation from edge to core”

Quote Twelve:

” Moving further out, it then becomes clear that – thanks to automation and developments in robotics – products will no longer need to be designed for use by humans, from the latches fastening servers in racks to all the safety features. The Ericsson and Intel “Future Digital Infrastructure” is an example of such a possible design [ref]. And if the designs are self-contained, perhaps they do not need dedicated real estate but can be integrated into existing infrastructure”

Finally, (for me), “In a zero distance world, precision control is a requirement enabled by real-time data-driven decisions. This need for precision control applies across the total business, including:

• Procurement
• Design
• Lifecycle management
• Operations to support
• Application deployment
• Application management
• Real-time TCO calculation.

This drives a continually improving industrialization cycle.

At Ericsson, this paper rightly informs me that they manage large-scale industry transformations with clients who cannot afford unknowns and/or failures and projecting way out into the future on what they are building and working on. I need to come back and focus on them for more digital and platform informing.

The paper comes to a view that has left me some thinking as my summary

“It is important, in this context, to adopt the new technology but never to value innovation over discipline. Cloud may be the most efficient and agile infrastructure and operating model to date. However, the cloud is a cost unless people, competence, process and automation tools exist to enable discipline. A diligent process must be followed that is not driven by technology, but by continuous business KPI’s and wanted customer experience.”

***I would differ on this point, discipline works up to a point, it is the ingenuity found when looking for value in innovation that trumps this but both need to be diligent and keeping alert to this essential customer need, not just experience.

So back to what this paper has as three main messages for businesses.

• Re-find who you are (soul)
• Learn the new ways of winning (mind)
• Become a digital machine (body)

“The first message touches the soul of a company. The second message drives home the need to understand the new rulebook for winning. And the third message is about building a next-generation business engine, a digital machine that delivers on the promise of the first two messages”.

It is somewhat annoying this paper does not seem to be readily available, it has some terrific messages of how digital is giving us this “the zero distance world” where we need to prepare for such major changes.

I just can’t find the paper on their site, so to provide a link to a direct PDF download Ericsson_Cloud_Zero-Distance-World paper, that is if you want to read it all.

The paper is a timely reminder to me to go back and spend more time on appreciating the contributions that Ericsson and their digital services bring besides a thought-provoking paper buried somewhere within their portal that offers some great quotes to reflect over.

BTW, I do not work or get paid for this, I just think the quotes extracted as stimulating and useful to share.

The post Being Reminded We Are In A Zero Distance World first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

Specifically, the platform business model has been generating a significant dynamism that is hard to ignore recently. We are increasingly in need to scale as quickly as possible and by moving to the emphasis of platform capacity, helps this considerably.

Platforms require networks and the need to build ecosystems and the whole focus is on increasing engagement, or build this “capacity”. Connecting all this up can provide real scale. Building greater capacity, especially without adding to resources yields a greater return.

I feel the way we presently view scale, one presently linked far more to one single entity, one that is wanting to scale up their business model and that limits opportunities. I feel searching for new ‘capacity’ opens this up and takes us more towards the open, collaborative platform business model, where real growth seems to reside for our business futures.

The digital platform is fast becoming the most powerful driver of innovation.

The digital platform allows through this capacity building to seek out productivity and collaborations. A platform only works in the ability to engage and build activity and momentum. They increasingly lend themselves to searching for a more radical innovation design. They can deliver more tailored made solutions in new products and services that combine multiple parties expertise to deliver a greater complexity in new bundles and combinations that meet that increasing need to “cut across” previous stand-alone sectors.

We can see this “platform effect” in Uber, TripAdvisor, Airbnb that offer increased transparency, comparison and build new combined services, these new bundles and combinations that make customer engagement easier to complete a whole journey or holiday “package” through the connected platform providers and their ecosystem of partners.

Also we see platforms constantly collapsing down transaction costs due to this ability to compare and be more transparent, allowing for consumers to have more ‘informed’ choices. This has then forced more efficiencies out of the system. Supply chains have become more focused on productivity and focused activities. Specialised have become more focused on offering a clear expertise in a given service. The industrial platform (B2B) is catching up on its business-to-consumer (B2C) digital sibling.

Platforms are economic drivers

Platforms are achieving different levels of penetration than before, you have the connection in your hand, they give customer benefits in this connected world, delivered on the platform and in new ways of innovating products and services, that allow you to “tailor and build” your solutions to your specific needs. We achieve greater convenience, choice, assortment and pricing comparison.

Platforms have become aggregators of supply and demand, this two-sided platform solution where demand and supply need to have a clear focus on any business platform solution. They work on reducing frictions, increasing choices, adding greater flexibility of timing, choice and solution combinations.

Risks, transaction costs, information gathering, negotiation and communications all change within good business platform models to become more effective at managing the process or transaction.

Lastly, the capacity within platforms allows for a more dynamic growth with lower marginal additional costs.

Of course, platforms are based on technology, lots of it.

The more superior application and solution, the ability to exponentially grow demand become critical. The attraction of one platform over another is determined by the dynamics of the technology solutions. It is this focusing on technology solutions is where one platform provider scores over the other.

This is such a growing area of my focus. The application of digital solutions through technology, ones that are powering innovation and our economic growth.

I came across this visual from a Roland Berger report on the state of platforms in Europe. It states a platform business is far superior to many of today’s traditional business models focused on “just” physical goods. If you are searching for growth today it has to be based on the Network Revolution, as they nicely put it.  Just look at this:

Understand and work out how the new market dynamics will grow your business and that is digitally

If you are not designing technology solutions, focusing on increasing your provision of services or working within coordinated networks no wonder your business is stagnant or declining, if not today then certainly real soon.

Innovation has such a high component of digital in the final solutions we are offering. Today our knowledge feeds innovation, digital feeds our knowledge, in our access to it and making the connected understanding as part of our solution designs.

All I can urge you to do is get into platform understanding, which works for you, which offers the greater potential, which allows you to connect up and build greater innovative offerings by recognizing working alone is the path to oblivion.

It is through collaboration and digital solutions you have a chance to redesign your business and make the connections with the consumer or your customers, who are all increasingly raising their expectations, wanting solutions that are fitting their lifestyle or business needs, so they can extract more and that is through digitally connected solutions.

The post The dynamics within platform business models first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

We have companies like Dassault who have been focusing on digital for many years taking a  specific focus on the human being and commercially releasing their “Living Heart”.

This “living heart” digital twin is the first realistic model of a human organ that actually accounts for electricity, mechanics and blood flow in the heart into a personalized full-dimensional model of the heart. Then users can practice and manipulate it, to place pacemakers, reverse chambers, cut out cross sections and run all sorts of hypothetical scenarios before the physical heart needs to be touched.

Then we have the digital twin that will learn all about you and what you do, think and work upon to provide you a closer replica of your daily life to help you. No, the digital twin is alongside us in multiple ways, it is not just a shadow in a mirror, mimicking all we do, in life and real time but it is working on finding better solutions to improve the actions being undertaken. It helps to predict, suggest and improve on our current activities.

Now stop and absorb that, please. The digital twin takes intelligence to a new level to mimic and then also predicts performance, based on the real-world performance you are feeding back into it.

A real-time performance that builds the digital thread that gives this connectivity and context to the decisions you want to make, or will allow you to investigate alternatives in the digital world, so that these can then be a precursor to doing them in the physical.

In a post or two, I want to take a little deeper look into digital twins and threads and what this all means. My main focus will be more the manufacturing world as it has been the grounding for what is emerging but I can’t promise this when I put on my future thinking hat, it might go differently.

Lets firstly in this post, look at some history and definitions

I have been researching, collecting and slowly try to absorb as much as this tiny brain can. I already need a powerful twin that can collect, predict and suggest where I keep investigating to speed up the process and make it more efficient. In time something out there will do this. Que Google or Amazon who are getting there, as are others.

Origins of the Digital Twin

The term “Digital Twin” was defined by Dr. Michael Grieves at the University of Michigan around 2001-2002. He originally defined this in the context of Product Lifecycle Management. In his paper, he introduced the concept of a “Digital Twin” as a virtual representation of what has been manufactured. He promoted the idea of comparing a Digital Twin to its engineering design to better understand what was produced versus what was designed, tightening the loop between design and execution.

The initial concept was to create a digital model of a physical system before building it. This way, tests, and simulations could be performed beforehand but not in real time but in predictive modeling. These designs were prototypes and commonly referred too as blueprints.

Jump forward to today. How do we presently define digital twins?

Looking through various papers I like some of these definitions of the digital twin.

Srivathsan Govindarajan, Vice President, SAP Digital Twin, summarized it best:

“A Digital Twin is a dynamic digital representation of a live physical object and needs to represent specific aspects of physical objects like shape, working state and structural behavior. Digital Twins will dynamically change in near real-time as the state of the physical object changes.”

Within the same article I was reading one summary was made: “A Digital Twin is simply a virtual representation of all the information users need to supplement their work—no more, no less. It’s a question of scope. Sure, an organization can gather more data than that one user might need. But that would simply mean there are more Digital Twins for each asset, user or relationship or one Digital Twin that filters data accessible by a user’s role”

One useful insight has been: “Different people interacting with the Digital Twin might want different lenses of it” Hold that thought, it extends out digital into a very different era of future relationships.

One other suggested definition I read was by Tom Maurer, with Siemens PLM software and he/they define the Digital Twin as “a digital model that accurately represents a product, production process or the performance of a product or production system in operation.” Now that definition fits more tightly into where a manufacturer might go in their definition.

I know definitions are evolving, for instance, I have been reading how Siemens has been evolving their Digital Twin, linking it into a Digital Thread and working this ultimately into a complete “Digital Factory” concept. Actually, Siemens has a dedicated “Digital Factory” division focusing on all things “digital”. It makes sense. It has been set up to offer a comprehensive portfolio of seamlessly integrated hardware, software and technology-based services to support the manufacturing world. It extends the Enterprise out beyond even a “digital enterprise in different solutions that connect the internal and external worlds”.

The digital twin has evolved from its PLM roots. For instance, much of Siemen’s current digital business comes from the legacy of a strong PLM focus over many years. CAD and CAE tools have been working and aiding in designing and simulating the performance of hardware for years. The difference today with the digital twin lies in its more dynamic form. The digital representation captures the mechanical, electrical, software and system aspects. It simulates any physical performance by the use of sensors and controllers ‘fixed’ on or embedded in the asset or specific moving parts, to provide ‘real-time data’ back to the digital twin, so as to allow an accurate ‘mirror’ of performance. So the digital twin is as closely representing the physical entity that it is ‘connected up too’. This virtual representation can also build two-way interactions, so remote parties can control the physical machine to change some of its parameters to optimize its performance.

The more you collect the more you have a digital thread

If you can imagine a digital twin is never static, there is always something changing. It is this historical trail that is seen as the digital thread. It can slice and dice to give the ability to view and inspect the digital representation of the product, asset or entity, at different points in time.

The digital thread becomes an increasing asset to refer too and use throughout the product’s lifecycle, you can predict, disclose and document it but more importantly, you can measure the lifecycle far more accurately by having a digital twin in place. For highly valuable assets this becomes very useful for future design, predictions, and new innovations.

The digital thread builds the communications framework and you can dip in and dive to the right information, at the place and time you want to explore. To make for a more effective and optimization of your assets. You can implement a more continuous refinement and begin to build interplays between multiple connect digital twins, to eventually have everything that has a sensor hooked up and built into a virtual digital factory, or our planes aircraft engines, to access, integrate, transform, inform and analyse performance for optimum delivery, that meets that moments time of need.

Having the digital thread gives you the opportunity to simulate performance under different conditions, loads, or environmental changes. As you learn, everything should get smarter. It allows for the engineer to understand the physical asset in real-time or in simulation, at different times, optimal or imposed conditions, to build better future solutions or manage the physical product today in better ways, to learn about performance, and how they will perform in different operating conditions, or providing predictive conditions in the future.

The key enablers to having digital twins

There are many, the basic ones are recognizing the value of being digital. Achieving a digital Enterprise allows for exploiting all the value in digital technology. The growing need is to place all that is digital onto a common platform where you build a new learning system of your physical world as you collect massive amounts of data, that need translating and evaluating.

Through PLM design we build the digital model of an object before it turns into the physical asset, making this initially a virtual product, then you can actually simulate this digital model into a virtual production process. It is then, you can turn a digital concept into a physical asset for real production testing and asset performance testing.  We can visualize, build, refine assumptions, troubleshoot and manage complexities and linkages within systems-of-systems, without even going onto the factory floor, although those physically managing the “asset” often have years of wisdom to incorporate in any future design.

So, a digital twin really is often ‘born’ before the physical end product. When you have got to this point you have reinvented your business around digital operations and you are talking the language of systems-of-systems, within a digital thread and you exploit hidden dependencies, seek out optimal points of intervention and integration and really innovate within your ‘operating’ environment, pushing the product or physical asset in better design, performance and optimization.

Wrapping up this introduction to Digital Twins

So, to finish this brief introduction into digital twins;  they form the basis for digital enterprises, they build the digital threads and can combine to build the digital factories but I want to add two more definitions to hold in your mind as we finish.

Firstly, “the digital twin is the virtual representation of a physical object or system across its life-cycle. It uses real-time data and other sources to enable learning, reasoning, and dynamically recalibrating for improved decision making.”  

Secondly, “an evolving digital profile of the historical and current behavior of a physical object or process is one that helps optimize business performance. It is the exact replica of the physical entity. It becomes a digital avatar that combines modelling and simulations with sensors and big data” Deloitte “Expecting digital twins”

In the future, I will explore these digital twins, threads, enterprises, and factories as these will all have a profound effect on us, in manufacturing, in service environments, in critical and equally hostile environments in their growing uses to build our lives differently. We will all need to re-imagine having “digital twins” in different ways.

The smartphone changed our lives, the digital twin has the same potential. We will all need to become comfortable with “digital avatars” all around us.

The post Have you got your digital twin strategy sorted out yet? first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

Both Microsoft Azure and AWS are building their own platforms also. Where would you put your money or fee’s to join?

Now if you are offering solutions that are focused specifically on solving industry problems where do you go, sign up, pay significant fees into and learn?

Would these decisions to join a platform take you towards those within an industry, the industrial builder of platforms, that build the physical assets and increasingly defining their digital services, or the providers of the digital kit, in the form of cloud, applications, data storage and security and the base platforms? Both have value but are the offerings clear enough in value or are they still leaving many potential clients still ‘sitting on the fence,’ not sure, watching what ‘plays out’

I am not sure how those within Partnership arrangement on platforms presently separate their knowledge and contribution but with the recent “slew” of Microsft Azure announcements, I wonder who is working for whom in some of these relationships?  Is the one with the digital architecture just piggybacking on the industrialist back, so as to understand industrial problems and then bring out their own ‘stand alone’ solutions? Where does that leave the industrial platform providers like GE & Siemens if the likes of Microsoft and Amazon seperately offer their own platforms? Take a read here and let me know your thoughts, please? I want to understand the dynamics going on here a little better.

Just take a look at this announcement from Microsoft Azure detailed below, not in partnerships but in providing the services for others to partner up with Microsoft. It opens up so many questions in my mind.

This opens up many questions on platforms -emerging winners and losers.

Where is the separation of intellectual understanding within current partnerships and is there just some very heavy extraction of industrial knowledge or digital knowledge being exchanged as mutually beneficial? Are we seeing a breaking down of the ecosystems built around platforms, reforming with the strongest emerging in true Darwinian ways?  Are we seeing separation occurring between specialist platform providers, knowing the physical assets, and the general digital experts (Microsoft and Amazon)  recognizing the need to capture the digital insights more on an exclusive basis? Are the early industrial platform builders paying a price in their ecosystem models, as the end prize of connecting industry for digital insights is a huge market being chased by many?

Each announcement mentioned here by Microsoft Azure undercuts, reaffirms or defines the value of why you join a platform. It is the underlying value being offered. They are the basis of present choice. Do platforms need to be physical asset specific or data only specific? How do you choose? It seems Microsoft wants to cover both sides of the street, both being in partnerships with the “branded” industrial platform providers but continually building their own ‘stand-alone’ platforms. How do you separate the business proposition out to the eventual client? What do you commit too and get “locked into.” Who are you dealing with on the platforms? Who is handling your data?   It requires a greater clarity in what is offered on the different business models and are these clear enough to make a decision yet today? It seems Microsoft Azure is making its own very specific ‘play’ to attract industrial clients onto its own IoT platform.

Let me quote directly from announcements made by Microsoft Azure:

For instance, Microsoft Azure is learning to simplify IoT for deepening customization and full control

Announcing Microsoft IoT Central, a new SaaS solution to simplify IoT

Today, Microsoft is announcing Microsoft IoT Central, a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that reduces the complexity of IoT solutions. Microsoft IoT Central is a fully managed SaaS offering for customers and partners that enables powerful IoT scenarios without requiring cloud solution expertise.

Built on the Azure cloud, Microsoft IoT Central simplifies the development process and makes it easy and fast for customers to get started, making the digital transformation more accessible to everyone.

Microsoft IoT Central will be available along with our existing platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution, Azure IoT Suite, which enables deep customization and full control. This new IoT SaaS offering has the potential to dramatically increase the speed at which manufacturers can innovate and bring new products to market, as well as lower the barriers to creating IoT solutions that generate new revenue opportunities and better experiences for customers.

Microsoft IoT Central will be rolling out more publicly over the coming months. Check out MicrosoftIoTCentral.com to sign up for essential content and updates.

Why is this “deep customization and deep control” important? I would currently suggest some of the Industrial providers (GE, Siemens) have a business model that might be far more controlled in their conditions that clients have to sign up too. The key for customers is their control, not signing this away to others, especially within the industry.

Then we have the “connected factory” for making the Industry 4.0 really possible

Microsoft Azure IoT Suite Connected Factory

For customers and partners with cloud solution expertise, Microsoft is continuing to invest in our existing PaaS offering, Microsoft Azure IoT Suite. At the Hannover Messe industrial show next week, Microsoft is introducing a new preconfigured solution in the Azure IoT Suite: Connected Factory, which helps accelerate a customer’s journey to Industrie 4.0 and makes it easy to connect on-premises OPC UA and OPC Classic devices to the Microsoft cloud and get insights to help drive operational efficiencies. In addition, it enables customers to securely browse and configure factory devices from the cloud.

We have partnered with several industry leaders in the OPC UA ecosystem that have built turnkey gateway solutions which have the Azure connectivity used by this solution already built in and require close to zero configuration. These partners include Unified Automation, Softing, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

For more on the connected factory and what it enables for customers and partners, see the Azure IoT Suite home page, along with this technical blog post and our Six Step Framework to Connected Factory white paper and demo.

See the website of Microsoft Azure on the Connected Factory  I don’t see references to the Industrial Partners in the same way as on the Industrial Partners “ecosystems”. So who actually does need whom?

The Connected Factory is very much a critical component offering again of GE and Siemens. They have specific groups or even dedicated divisions set up for managing the digital factory and its future. So are Microsoft and these industry providers collaborating, in a partnership or are they separating to become real competitors and the one that holds the final platform is the eventual winner and that seems in my limited mind, eventually Microsoft or AWS?

Everything is centered around sensors and Azure is building a number of API’s

Microsoft Azure Time Series Insights

IoT devices and sensors send data in a time-based fashion, and a critical requirement of IoT solutions is to find anomalies and trends in this data. But until now, companies have had to hire partners or staff experts to mine the data for insights.

Today, Microsoft is announcing a new service: Azure Time Series Insights, a fully managed analytics, storage, and visualization service that makes it simple to interactively and instantly explore and analyze billions of events from an IoT solution.

Azure Time Series Insights provides a global view of data across various event sources so companies can quickly validate their IoT solutions and avoid costly downtime of mission-critical devices. It helps organizations discover hidden trends, spot anomalies, and conduct root-cause analysis in near real time, all without writing a single line of code through its simple and intuitive user experience. In addition, it provides rich APIs to enable companies to integrate its powerful capabilities into their existing workflows and applications.

Microsoft IoT Central and the Azure IoT Suite connected factory preconfigured solution both leverage the new Azure Time Series Insights service now available in preview.

Companies and partners like ThyssenKrupp Elevator and Codit are already leveraging Time Series Insights to drive cost reduction and meet customer needs. To learn more, read our technical blog and sign up for the Azure Time Series Insights preview today.

Another key selling point for the industrial platform providers is edge devices or is it?

Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics on edge devices

Although many developers are already benefiting from connecting IoT devices directly to the cloud, some scenarios require edge intelligence to get the most out of the IoT solution. In 2016, Microsoft launched the Azure IoT Gateway SDK, which enables developers and ISVs to easily build and deploy gateway intelligence tailored to their specific scenario.

Today, Microsoft is announcing the preview of Azure Stream Analytics on edge devices, a new feature of Azure Stream Analytics that extends the benefits of this unique streaming technology from the cloud down to the device level.

Azure Stream Analytics on edge devices has the same unified cloud-managed experience for stream analytics running across edge devices and the cloud. This approach enables organizations to use streaming analytics in scenarios where connectivity to the cloud is limited or inconsistent, but the need for quick insight and proactive actions are essential to run the business.

What about getting up and running, where will clients turn too?

Microsoft Azure IoT Hub Device Provisioning service

Microsoft is continuing our commitment to reducing the complexity and time required to get started with IoT. The new Azure IoT Hub Device Provisioning service simplifies the enrollment process, enabling organizations to automatically register and provision their devices to IoT Hub in a secure and scalable way while saving time and resources. Device Provisioning will work with any type of IoT device already supported by Azure IoT Hub.

Devices running Windows 10 IoT operating systems will enable an even easier way to connect to Device Provisioning via a client application that OEMs can include in the device unit. With Windows 10 IoT, customers can get a zero-touch provisioning experience, eliminating configuration and provisioning hassles when onboarding new IoT devices that connect to Azure services.

When combined with Windows 10 IoT support for Azure IoT Hub device management, the entire device lifecycle management is simplified through features that enable device reprovisioning, ownership transfer, secure device management, and device end-of-life management. You can learn more about Windows IoT device provisioning and device management details by visiting Azure IoT Device Management and reading our technical blog.

Then finally in this “slew” of Microsoft announcement comes a stronger IoT security set of partnerships

Security partners bring silicon to the age of IoT

Microsoft’s commitment to leadership in IoT security continues, and today we are announcing Azure IoT support for a wide variety of hardware and standards to strengthen our commitment to IoT security.

Azure IoT now supports the industrywide security standards Device Identity Composition Engine (DICE) and Hardware Security Module (HSM). The DICE standard enables manufacturers to use silicon gates to create device identification based on hardware, making security hardware part of the DNA of new devices from the ground up. HSMs are the core security technology used to secure device identities and provide advanced functionality such as hardware-based device attestation and zero-touch provisioning.

Microsoft is also announcing partnerships with Micron, STMicro to support various types of silicon leveraging HSM and DICE security technologies and Spyrus to support HSM as part of SD and USB storage devices.

Next week at Hannover Messe, Microsoft will showcase how the device identification and attestation model can be used to protect IoT devices large and small by allowing for automatic device registration and assignment to IoT Hub as soon as the device is turned on — automating an authentication and provisioning process to save time for IoT implementations. Hardware from Micron and STMicro will be on display.

So next week Microsft at Hannover Messe compete or compliment others? Time to decide?

Microsoft at Hannover Messe

Next week at Hannover Messe, Microsoft will showcase how we’re helping to advance digital transformation for customers by simplifying IoT, making it more accessible and easier to implement, as well as continuing to offer the most comprehensive portfolio of IoT solutions.

With Microsoft IoT Central, Microsoft is simplifying IoT so every business can digitally transform through IoT solutions that are more accessible and easier to implement. Microsoft has the most comprehensive IoT portfolio with a wide range of IoT offerings to meet organizations where they are on their IoT journey, including everything businesses, need to get started — ranging from operating systems for their devices, cloud services to control them, advanced analytics to gain insights, and business applications to enable intelligent action.

Microsft announces they will invest $5 billion in IoT

Today, we are announcing that we will invest $5 billion in the Internet of Things over the next four years. The reason we are doing this is simple: Our goal is to give every customer the ability to transform their businesses, and the world at large, with connected solutions.

Enabling increasingly sophisticated customers

Microsoft’s IoT offerings today include what businesses need to get started, ranging from operating systems for devices, cloud services to control and secure them, advanced analytics to gain insights, and business applications to enable intelligent action. We’ve seen great traction with customers and partners who continue to come up with new ideas and execute them on our platform.

So what does this all mean for the Industrial Platform provider like GE Predix or Siemens Mindsphere?

There is a time, a tipping point where clients will decide on where to invest their IoT dollars.

Already I have been writing recently about  “the dark clouds surrounding IIoT platforms“ as well as  “So are clients resisting IIoT platforms- Why?” There are multiple hurdles to overcome in being clear on which platform is better to invest in.

So where will clients decide to go? Will they go in exclusive “locked in” arrangements with GE or Siemens as providers of their systems, PLM software and machines and feel confident enough to extend this out across their “connected factory,” as these Manufacturers of the physical assets, have such deem domain knowledge. Or will they look to Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS for the future, who have that deeper digital domain understanding, where they might feel these dedicated software solution experts offer a more flexible set of solutions? It is actually the need for both and that is why you need a powerful ecosystem of partners but what happens if one breaks away and offers their own platform, it can confuse clients wanting less risk but better cohesive solutions.

Then you do have to ask are any of these industrial platforms truely open? Determining the business model and its revenue generating approach becomes quite complex. Is it all about the race towards “lock-in”? Do the industrial platform providers have sustainable business models as they stand today?

Is it not about time that the clarity of the relationships offered on an Industrial platform provider, like GE Predix or Siemens Mindsphere, and the ability to interchange, move around, work within a greater connected ecosystem, becomes well stated by all involved?

This goes beyond Governance it provides the open clarity required in any investment, knowing what you are getting yourself into. Any sharing of data, any partners you engage with, and any reliance on 3rd parties, needs careful consideration. I would suggest those industrial partners, built up over years of collaboration, have real value.

What is needed is a change into a different form of collaborative thinking,  a new ecosystem management where transparency, collaboration and co-creation are at the heart of the approach and the platform provider ‘orchestrates’ the inputs and outputs, for collective value.

Today I think it is still very murky and grey. What do you think?

If I was GE or Siemens I would be thinking very deeply on their existing business model for Predix or Mindsphere, otherwise, the software providers of Microsoft and Amazon AWS will eat all their lunch………do you see the same happening?

What should the industry providers of platforms change? What should they emphasis as their real value? Are platforms open enough to ‘encourage’ true ecosystem behaviors of collaboration and co-creation? Or does the instincts of one species want to start dominating to build their own specific version of self-interest imposed on the ecosystem? We have had the ‘battle of devices’ now we have the ‘battle of platforms’.

*****Details drawn from  https://blogs.microsoft.com/iot/2017/04/20/microsoft-simplifies-iot-further/

The post When is a partner not a partner? first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

IIoT Platform providers are building new digital solutions. There are constant daily gains. A new client win here, a new contract there.

Yet the battle is one of attrition, client by client. Do you win in this approach? To gain traction, all the IIoT platform providers seem to have pressing needs to overcome massive client resistance at this present time. Platform uptake is gradual, it needs a higher depth in resolution, in the value of platforms, in their momentum. What is its value proposition to the client, the one who buys that solution? Is it still too early in their own digital transformation journey? Actually, clients are having a hard time in this and many other digital decisions.

A report recently commissioned, sponsored by GE, was researching on the emerging gaps between executive outlook for digital transformation and initiatives organizations have in place to achieve a higher uptake and engagement in platforms It was highly revealing.

Just to pick up on a couple of headline grabbers.

The GE funded report found Eighty percent (80%) believe IIoT will or could transform their companies or industry. Yet, only 8 percent yet say digital transformation is ingrained in their business and 10 percent have no digital transformation plan even in place. The reasons were varied but it seems present solutions by the platform providers are not resonating as strongly as they should be.

Honing the value proposition is a work-in-progress

Of course, we are seeing the classic list of winning stories, of the validation of the business case but these are specific, actually highly specific. They may help advance and capture new ground but they are not enough to win the new digital connected (war) argument for many or resolve their own positions. Something needs to change in the proposition of the IIoT platform BM or we have a real wait. There are alternatives but they need a different narrative to build around.

There seem lots of inhibitors to uptake by those you would expect to buy these platform services. Besides where they will invest their money, it is trustworthiness of the vendor, yes, even those who they buy their physical assets from (!) and this real fear of early lock-in where there might emerge different digital solutions.

Also, we have the growing list of concerns around implementation.

Those system/development integration costs associated with any project of this size and commitment. We have time to implement successfully and all the associated connecting up costs, the users inexperience in the technology or solutions provided, the worry or later realization that the solutions did not actually meet the business requirements, they just layered on complexity and always that lack of internal IT resources to support this, often across multiple sites of deployment to get any value of it.

The bottom line here is businesses are challenged. Can many companies actually understand cutting-edge solutions? The Aberdeen Group in association with IBM has looked at IoT issues in a recent report on this and it is showing a true “stack” of problems to work through.

There are some real worries over the true ability to truly connect all into the platform and gain returns on the investments made in the ways being described. The goal of any platform is to reduce your development risk and stay up-to-date on rapid changes in digital technology and working within a community makes powerful sense for this, accelerate your product’s time-to-market or achieving a greater productivity than today, and reduce cost in downtime, inefficient use of your assets are powerful aspects to consider and make the business case.

Blowing away many of those dark clouds

The value of dealing with the IIoT platform provider is they know your industry, the likelihood is they supplied the assets in the first place, so you have a shared interest in maximizing the assets deployed.They have firstly, their reputation on the line, they can enable you as a client to tap into the larger community, they are busy building greater functionality into the applications (ASP’s) to keep improving on solutions.

In your platform providers, you have horizontal and vertical providers, ie. choosing Microsoft Azure or Siemens Mindsphere for example. Those that are vertical solution providers do have a deep domain knowledge to help bridge numerous issues (regulations, data, and analytics) and finally, a growing solutions team that makes “on-boarding” and helping in your architecture, structures and supporting you in your proof-of-concept to realization steps. They are becoming “one-stop solution providers. They can provide a digitally constructed backbone through these IIoT platforms. Vertical providers have been realizing they have to partner with either/ and Microsoft Azure, AWS for Amazon or IBM and Watson as they, themselves, lack the bandwidth to go alone. We are seeing the “twinning or eventual winning model” emerge out of this.

Yet the dark clouds continue to stack up

The applications being built (for clients) are claimed as real solutions to their problems but are they? How deep is the domain knowledge if it is outsourced due to lack of internal resources on the vertical platform providers? I have heard a number of apps, claiming to be solutions have been far from that from one specific vertical provider as their internal software developers had actually little exposure to the business. The quality of the resource is something you need to put a “buyer beware sticker on” if this is not to continue.

What about the really massive task of re-orientating the organization into a digital reliant one. Does each company have different methodologies, of course? Legacy systems have held organizations back, resolutions are complex and expensive for many. Connecting up old machines, resolving multiple software protocols is highly specialized work. The ability to bring platform solutions inside is inhibited today, largely by a lack of digital maturity, legacy issues or alignment. This holds many back from making platform commitments. There is a massive lag as partly pointed out in the GE report.

There are actually far more issues to bridge and overcome but these mentioned above are wicked constraints, or immobilizing boards or IT to commit. There is much still needed to be overcome. Picking up on these and bridging these gaps is essential to define, understand and know if you are considering a platform solution or a provider of solutions. Are the IIoT providers taking into account the list of real concerns that are out there or just deploying all the consultants brought in on the platform to go in and solve these? The client welcomes in the trojan horse (see the previous article) and is that consultant welcomed or in conflict with their own approved list of providers of consulting services?

As you investigate IIoT platforms you see lots of similarities.

If you surround yourself with the same type of “consulting generals”, schooled in the same school of digital technology building, there is a good chance you will get much of the same result and a price. Clients are looking for a different proposition I feel. More than likely a different business model for them to invest time and understanding in, one that is committing their digital future, needs figuring out that it has a good chance of being a winning one for them. The mid-tier or specialized consultant, might offer more focused value but are they partners of choice offered on the IIoT platform? So the platform is not as open as it should be.

Being in a community, a thriving ecosystem of equal partners extracting value, made up of a very diverse set of connected parties is yet to come but we need to set the conditions, the environment for this to come into force now, not try and retrofit it later. This is one of the powerful unlocking keys for platform providers today.

Understanding Ecosystem Management is becoming critical to design into future solutions

Here lies my central theme that the real need is to deeply think through the ecosystem conditions and framework, as it has the transforming aspect missing. For all involved, this still needs a lot of work and understanding. An ecosystem is not just another buzzword, it needs framing well.

So today it is all to play for but perhaps we need new Strategic design leadership here?

Who of the current IIoT platform providers will change the game, shift the positioning and recognize the current barriers to major advancement is through a different type of digital play? Have they the time and resources to allow the majority of customers to catch up in digital maturity? Will some of those early platform providers run out of cash, patience or recognize that the specialists all inside the platform (Microsoft Azure, IBM and it’s Watson, AWS from Amazon) are better equipped to be the platform provider as the technology evolution continues with constant high investments.

We are only at the beginning of IIoT, of platforms, of digitalization, being realized by the majority. A lot is holding the majority back to make the transformation needed, for this and all things digital within their organizations.

There are big barriers to committing to specific (specialized) IIoT platforms

In summary for clients, they have critical questions to have resolved before many will commit to specific platforms. The big ones are where they will invest their money, they are questioning the trustworthiness of the vendor, even though they have invested in their physical assets, and this real fear of early lock-in, and finally as the big roadblocks, the ability to truly connect to the platform and gain returns on the investments made.

Of course, the biggest one, are you, as a client, ready for your own digital transformation? This is a deeply committing and expensive undertaking. It might initially be contained in operations or manufacturing but the true value of “going digital” is for all to be involved, to relate, to leverage and ‘mine’ the data knowledge and extract the specific value to help in your role, across the whole organization and in your partners that equally need to know and respond.

Lastly, on present count, there are over 450 platform providers, catering to both B2B and B2C. IoT Analytics produce a report listing these. If your business spans different industry sectors, how many platforms can you afford to have?

The balance in designing platforms for equitable distribution is hard.

Are the applications being built (for clients), claimed as real solutions to their problems, but are they? What about the really massive task of re-orientating the organization into a digital reliant one that goes with constant data flows? Data needs to build new value, otherwise, it simply stays a “data for data’s sake”. How can platform partners help in the supply of data? Analytics need to become more intelligent and actionable.

There are actually far more issues to bridge and overcome but these mentioned above are wicked constraints, that need to be overcome. Picking up on these and bridging these gaps is essential to know if you are considering a platform solution or a provider of solutions. Are the IIoT providers taking into account the list of real concerns that are out there?

More on another day as we keep a real focus on IIoT platform providers. Industrial domination by one or even a few is premature for any involved. All we can see it is well underway, with many twists and turns to come.

I have seen varying estimates around IoT platforms and IoT in general. The pie is huge. One example quoted this: The IoT will result in $1.7 trillion in value added to the global economy in 2019. This includes hardware, software, installation costs, management services, and economic value added from realized IoT efficiencies.

Finally, I wrote an opening article recently for www.iiot-world.com.

It was about fleshing out an opening snapshot of the world of IIoT platform providers. Go over and take a read, please.

http://iiot-world.com/connected-industry/the-very-dynamic-iiot-digital-solution-platform-market-an-opening-snapshot/#wpcf7-f6297-p6287-o1

IIoT platforms are evolving. To learn more or delve deeper I am in discussions with IIoT-World to build more about platforms understanding together, well that’s our current intent. We want to build a community offering an independent service for those that need thoughtful advice on what they need to know and understand.

Who said being an industrial giant is boring. Take note Silicon Valley; the “asset-heavy industrial muscle” is getting tuned up and the lasting potential of having industry connected up is massive in projected value.

Where are you in your IIoT platform decision journey? My aim is to help explore aspects of this journey as it is part of our connected future. These questions do have answers but they need systematically working through from the clients perspective, not the platform providers one. This is where the focus lies today for all involved.

The post So are clients resisting IIoT platforms- Why? first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

I am constantly educating myself on this, as there is so much of this being new, or emerging, to make the connections for where innovation is going in “dual” tandem with technology and digital. A recent post I made tells of this growing connection for a new ROI.

I decided to become focused on business platforms and ecosystems for a number of reasons- firstly they are fascinating me ( I know I have to get a grip!) and more importantly for my business advisory work going forward in connecting innovation into this world.

So this posting site is a place where I share a number of strands of thought to provide increased understanding, to get others to become comfortable on their “learning journey” of new emerging industrial digital technology models, ones that offer a very exciting connected future but evolutionary in their nature.

I want to help shape, influence and amplify the breaking story of IIoT platforms-as-a-service as part of my advisory business model (as-a-service) and take them to the most important level of need to understand; the ecosystem building that is required.Taking on new journeys of understanding and potential for innovation is exciting, well for me.

Commercial break over so let’s get back to platforms and ecosystems…

At the moment I have been specifically looking at the questions that seem to be holding IIoT platforms back? There are a number of inhibitors. So how can a number of dark clouds dissipate for IIoT platforms to really become the future way of connecting up so much within your specific industry sector? This is first of two posts….

I have been looking at this in recent weeks. This post is just my questioning part. Actually lots of questioning. I’m still looking and figuring a number of different “strands of thoughts” to fuse, so stay tuned-in. We need to question much as we are increasingly placing IIoT platforms into businesses, but it the further step of ecosystem thinking that I believe will help dissipate these current clouds.

Lets first recognize the dark clouds that are forming, holding back real platform momentum and ask some questions:

Some of the largest industrial organizations are offering their clients their take on a digital platform-as-a-service. Included are GE, Siemens, ABB and Schneider Electric and I have been progressively reviewing each of these over on this site. 90% plus desk research and that has been limited by the time it takes, as none of these are providing a comprehensive story of hard, validate facts, they are often chosen to provide the facts that fit their own emerging story. Understandable for them, not for clients wanting to make a decision based on facts, or analysts attempting to validate progress.

In summary, GE has been at the forefront of this in building its Predix Platform. ABB with its Ability platform, Siemens with its Mindsphere, Schneider Electrics has its EcoStruxure offering. I want to turn my attention soon to what I assume (rightly or wrongly) are followers of this front pack. This includes Honeywell, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Rockwell, and Emerson, along with many others working through the decision of how to go digital, what to offer to connect up their customers into their business, what offering become a platform that works for their business.(note again, theirs)

Platforms being built for IIoT are far from open, they are still closed.

Here is where we can certainly start but it might not be based on the right principles to scale. I believe a platform should certainly be constantly working to be open.In platform theory, it needs to attract activity from the whole community that sees ‘s value in being part of it.

We have at least two sides of the IIoT platform

Firstly the supply side, dominated by the provider of the platform services. These are the ones that build, service, support and develop new services. Then we have the demand-side,  those that buy the digital and technology solution services. The clients of the Industrial platform providers, the ones that feed the essential “need” or value, in data onto the platform and expect “returns”. If you do not get balance in this, the reciprocating value diminishes fast and the power of the “network effect” falls away. This needs addressing constantly, this really is keeping a balance between the system and a constant work-in-progress to push out and ‘feed’ the system.

At present, I see the platforms as being very Supply-sided. The view of “if we build, they will come” seems to dominate.The demand-side, on the other hand, seems a little muted. They receive but do they get to enable, build and tailor to their specific needs, through being part of the community on the platform or have to accept solutions built by others? They get provide data, they buy apps as their solutions, then they get back information, analytics, and actionable insights. Not a bad deal but is it good enough?They can happily gaze at dashboards that help them to be more productive and take further appropriate actions on top of ones previously but is this enough for the cost of change required? But is clarity of ownership of everything becoming the elephant in the room to address?

Tipping point or chasm?

Why are we not seeing a surge of platform investments by the very clients being told constantly of real productivity gains? Maybe we are close to a “tipping point” or that famous “crossing the chasm” outlined so brilliantly by Geoffrey A Moore.

There is much to reflect upon for platforms-as-a-service that there seems a much deeper need of validating far more before the majority make the commitment. Is it a far too risky investment decision to make?  Is the return on investments not as easy to validate, to justify investing in one or the other specific IIoT platform solutions? What is holding many back from investing in IIoT platforms-as-a service solutions?

Understanding the theory “Crossing the Chasm” seems important here.

Quoting part of a Wikipedia reference:

“In Crossing the Chasm, Moore begins with the diffusion of innovations theory from Everett Rogers, and argues there is a chasm between the early adopters of the product (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists). Moore believes visionaries and pragmatists have very different expectations, and he attempts to explore those differences and suggest techniques to successfully cross the “chasm,” including choosing a target market, understanding the whole product concept, positioning the product, building a marketing strategy, choosing the most appropriate distribution channel and pricing.

Crossing the Chasm is closely related to the technology adoption lifecycle where five main segments are recognized: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. According to Moore, the marketer should focus on one group of customers at a time, using each group as a base for marketing to the next group. The most difficult step is making the transition between visionaries (early adopters) and pragmatists (early majority). This is the chasm that he refers to. If a successful firm can create a bandwagon effect in which enough momentum builds, then the product becomes a de facto standard. However, Moore’s theories are only applicable for disruptive or discontinuous innovations. Adoption of continuous innovations (that do not force a significant change of behavior by the customer) are still best described by the original technology adoption lifecycle”

So we might be at a chasm point for IIoT platforms-as-a-service. So we are full of those questions, questions, questions, to take us over the chasm- my quest is for finding answers that help make the “jump” happen. I have got some good ideas of where they might come from. There are many gaps to be explored and that is one of my current tasks at hand, as I am sure it is for plenty of others who have more of a “vested” interest.

To understand what is holding so many back in their decision to commit, is the key? Understanding needs are really important.

The investments to be made are seemingly deeply committing and the pressures always become one of achieving a return, providing others within your company that this digital platform solution was the right one to commit too. With so much of platform management still emerging, with plenty of conflicting views, it is an uncomfortable place for those making the decision. They need help, they don’t need “hype”, they need a factual understanding. How much value do we still place on independence and really believe in the “open” prospect?

Being open within any company or organization is still very much simply ‘open’ to their specific interpretation. We are hearing the IIoT platform ‘hype’ of being open but there needs to be a much better reflection of what being open really means and to whom? Open for business does not necessarily mean value for those that sign up and commit, it is the ones that manage the “digital gold” of data that are holding the future value positioning. The present wisdom is that the platform owner is in the driving seat of future value, are others really comfortable with that?

As platform providers race to build ‘apps’ or assign that to others to build, this promotes being open for application developers to add more “apps” to make available on the platform. This is great, it gives a real vibrancy and increased validation but is still ‘only’ part of a bigger solution, as this continues to build the supply-side, whereas today it is resolving demand-sided issues to gain more “network effects,” to turn a platform into a thriving community, growing in inter-dependency on each other.

I recall one insight, it went something like this “it is when the value to the community is worth more than to the platform provider you have a real platform solution”.

Being Open becomes one of the critical aspects to address.

The actions currently being undertaken might be moving towards being open, or they building more constraints for their platforms to be closed off, only available to those that have size, can make the investment and see value beyond the existing paradigms of “improved productivity” or “apps” they can apply to their business. Are we heading for a real open model or just advancing on existing models in (semi) open and selective ways?

Also by having a terrific list of “ecosystem” partners, that that make-up ‘the who’s who’ of consulting, supporting a platform build is equally great but is this open? I believe this heavy stacking on the supply-side in partnering has been part of the problem, even though they might have been essential to building the initial offering, it makes others on the demand side wary of what this might mean. The trojan horse effect of subterfuge? More on this later. Mixed messages need resolving.

I believe we need to dissipate the clouds and open up our thinking differently.

IIoT Platforms are full of constraints, conditions, and commitments. The way they are being built-in the offering might actually be holding back progress as the Business Model is perhaps more one-sided, at the very time momentum is needed, for data volume to build and that needs a different business model design, as ecosystems are designed differently.

For those that have been investing, there might be a good argument to keep on the current BM but there should be a healthy questioning on the present Business Model, does this appeal for the clients, you want to attract? I would argue, the IIoT platform is a different model than an IoT one and needs a new calibration of the BM offering.

I do see some dark clouds as we are very much “stuck” in the near-term horizon unless all these industrial organizations begin to really understand a business need is to focus far more on a thriving ecosystem that is really open, mutual respecting in value and contribution. A different emphasis in the platform building community.

Today IIoT platform solutions seem very internally focus on the one specific organization that is offering the platform and tailoring solutions to their business needs. I am sure they would disagree but growth should be moving at a far more rapid scale of adoption, for greater community value and exploring the ‘greater’ collaboration potential.

Perhaps the way they are structured is not a sustainable business model, and I’ll clarify what I mean by that in a subsequent post or two. What we need to do is open up to the world of ecosystems in its management and governance needed for IIoT. Also part of this exploration of IIoT platforms we need to delve further into the current state of adoption and development and the strategies required.

Part two follows: So are clients resisting IIoT platforms – why?

The post There are dark clouds surrounding IIoT platforms first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

It does seem every time you read about GE it seems to be under a relentless barrage of negative news coverage.Then the stock is continuing to get a hammering perpetually.

Mistakes will be also made going forward, as the current management tries to “right the ship” after so much mismanagement. Digital course correction might be one of these mistakes.

For me watching the current GE story unveil itself it, just fills me with a real sense of sadness. Clearly, it now seems GE lost its ability to listen, reflect and adapt, its management was cutting many governance corners, pushing for performance that was not as much in the ‘tank’ as they thought and placing bets on the future, that was very bearish and as it is now revealed, possibly reckless.

GE as a group business was being pushed on, regardless, it sort of ploughed on as a supertanker does, unable to make the course corrections it was required to do, as its steering was jammed in ‘full speed and forward drive’, regardless, ignoring dangers, possibly sealed in its own bubble, one of believing it was invincible.

Yet one of the boldest moves made in the reign of Jeff Immelt that might have been a substantial transformation was the shift to digital that he underpinned, although there have been comments I have seen by outsiders of “the endless checkbook.” All I can say is that you have to invest in opportunities like this, they are so transforming. The ability to spot the industrial internet was one of his positive signature moves, taken I believe nearly a decade ago – a lifetime in the digital world. So lets update where we are.

Warning messages, yet full speed ahead, Immelt was a believer.

GE really did get caught-up in the hype of its own messages and took on the ‘jargon’ of the startup, learning to be agile, lean and pivot in executing, especially on their digital transformation. A New York article written in August 2016 foretold the risks in GE: The 124 year plus industrial software start-up. on the digital transformation.

In this New York article and I quote: “G.E.’s success or failure over the next decade, Mr. Immelt says, depends on this transformation. He calls it “probably the most important thing I’ve worked on in my career.”

Apparently, there is no Plan B. “It’s this or bust,” he said.”

As we now know reality has finally struck and GE is in a very difficult crisis of market confidence, across most of its business, as it reveals these mistakes on a constant, sometimes drip by drip basis.GE under its new CEO and Chairman John Flannery, are returning to their roots, where performance is embedded in all they deliver. So there is an emerging plan B even for the Digital Transformation.

Change takes time to absorb, past, present, and future

New methods and concepts take time to absorb and learn, in ways that sometimes are far beyond the understanding of the organizations’ employees in applying these to add value.  Becoming an industrial digital company is a deep, sustaining undertaking. Those underneath were not as well-equipped in their ability to realize; as engineers, researchers, salespeople, on what to learn and apply as the new digital ways. Constant changes that were being demanded and asked out of them were coming thick and fast. Perhaps it deflected away from the core They were ill-equipped to transition into the new digital era at a “start-up” speed expected by Immelt. It takes time, where you build out the ‘network effect’ and find new ways to collaborate, and not impose your solutions, your listen, reflect and adapt to client needs and many times let them led with solutions..

Digital equally has equally needed to be reined in and refocused in today’s reality.

Mistakes have been made, a warning ignored on the digital transformation. Let’s look at some of these.

In Immelt’s classic optimistic view, supported by those equally buying the GE transforming story, of being the “digital industrial company,” this GE digital business was going to become a $15 billion business by 2020. This was revised down to $12 billion when double accounting and internal mechanics were accounting definitions were being adjusted, to say the value of software-enabled product upgrades needs to be accounted for differently, than new to the market “pure” software business.

Yearly budgets of billions were added into the digital solutions all the time, a further $700 million additional was required in 2017, continuing the spending spree. I gather $4 billion has been quoted as invested in this digital business so far. As spending in this digital initiative grew, it equally helped weigh down on group profits. Predix as a platform service was central to this digital transformation and it has not yet achieved a $1 billion revenue in a year.

In GE’s view, a digital dawn was a full feature in their 2016 Annual Report

“At its core, a digital industrial company uses data and analytics to create a “digital twin” of each of its processes and physical assets. This digital foundation enables the company to drive down costs while delivering consistent quality. It also enables the company to run a “digital thread” through the design, build and service functions, using analytic intelligence to create a virtuous loop that delivers continuous improvements to equipment for customers”

As we reflect back, Immelt pushed digital everywhere within the group, hard. He wanted always to go sooner than any other companies to capture this industrial internet (IIoT) market. He took a highly offensive market position of taking no prisoners, all GE needed to do was “take the IIoT digital hill” at all costs. Go do it!

Aggressiveness has a price

When you take such an aggressive stance you are often in search of new meaning. You have to back this vision up with a strong investment in growth orientation by investing in new capabilities and pursuing new market models. Others were simply expected to only follow, fall in line the typical GE way, simply determine to come along or stay on the sidelines.  Many waited…..curious.

As a first-mover on this specific opportunity, of the size of GE, a number of mistakes were made. Immelt was learning about a very different world of digital-light versus physical ‘heavy’ assets, massive to understand and translate, possibly deflecting him from the present core of managing such a company the size of GE, stepped in building plant and machinery for major industrial sectors.

Asset-light worlds are managed differently

GE was suddenly competing in an asset-light world, where speed, scope, scale, size all took on a completely different meaning in the digital environment. Competitors were more agile, dynamic and evolving at totally different evolution than machinery and plant. Actually, software is a very different business. A world where to compete, it required GE to perform major surgery on itself, a  “transforming effect”, a change of huge magnitude and no time to allow it to simply filter and trickle down, it needed imposing from the top.

The new culture of lean management thinking suddenly had a real purpose for managing massive amounts of data, fast iterations and constant refreshing of applications onto thousands of employees not attuned to being ‘digital natives’.

GE had entered into a very different part of the ecosystem terrain. I think it actually overwhelmed many as massive change, firstly confront you and then you need time to absorb what this means for you, many did not, or cared not too, it had not been part of their job.

As my opinion I think the past culture dominated, it rose back up, one of staying with what you know, look after yourself first, adjust when it fits your accountable business objectives and your divisions need to achieve the quarterly numbers.

Digital and the Predix platform does have the potential for a lasting positive contribution, if it is not relegated as a supporting group, in these times of real GE crisis. Today GE is in crisis time, one of needing to focus way beyond the normal, to survive and does this bold digital decision suffer. Certainly digital is getting a sharper focus to simply support GE businesses.

A world full of highly adept and seasoned technology and digital competitors owning the block

How does a company like GE compete? In Immelt’s view, you take them on. GE had size, scale, scope, and ambition to transform the industrial industry. He would not hunt in a pack, he was the lone wolf, all teeth, and self-belief. Yet when you come up against the likes of Amazon and Microsoft, who were spending tens of billions of dollars on data centers, cloud services and the constant ramping up for the total Internet of things (IoT) it is a totally different “ballpark” to what GE had been used too.

It failed to recognize every platform for digital solutions needs a rich ecosystem to feed it. Amazon’s AWS and Microsofts “Azure” were competitors GE simply could not compete with. The significant onboarding cost of 20,000+ software engineers, grounded in software but mostly lacking in industrial experience was another costly call. Ecosystems have many predators, some evolve quicker than others, no matter how you try.

Internally within GE, the structure of each division became another difficulty to overcome.

Taking digital into a separate division added to internal conflicts. The ability to overcome so much legacy within installed plant and machinery equally gave its challenges to software design. Over the years different coding languages, limited capacity, older devices to accept updates, to make the actual connections into a network, that can truly utilize the network was costly and time-consuming. It consumed much to work out and overcome.

Predix was consuming much of the attention in the group divisions as the need to implement came from the very top. Selling to customers became more selling digital solutions as a “must” on complicated plant and machinery deals. GE Capital was not the same type of friendly banker to help “sweeten” these deals as in the past. Digital was partly laying on complexity and additional cost. GE’s market position was shifting in its competitiveness, the future vision was up against today’s hard-nosed reality on spending by its customers. It pressed on regardless. Ignore the environmental conditions within the ecosystem and you can be at peril.

Performance failed to deliver on the hype sold

Even when solutions involving digital as a critical part, the disappointments came as installations, performance and digital solutions sold was not as customers had been promised. Even the applications they were provided lacked the specific features that worked for their business. Technical, structural and operational problems lay underneath the veneer of digital being the magic transformation bullet that Immelt expected.

We have learned in post-Immelt how he did not like bad news. His self-belief ignored a raft of problems within digital and Predix. The market and many of GE’s most critical clients were not getting what the “hype” was promising. Customization to client needs was a far bigger problem than recognized. Laying on more money to fix it was only part of the solution, you actually needed to know how to do it!.

Ramping up a software business such as the ambition of Predix was very hard. Although the tantalizing prospect of the industrial internet market was predicted to be worth $225 billion by 2020, GE was increasingly being bogged down by the push in over-promise and under-delivery

If you are a hunter, leading the attack, carving out a new territory, the understanding of the ecosystem and what that means for you to be adaptive to it, needs deep understanding., otherwise, you enter a new curve of reality. Reassessments were needed.

The Course Correction of the new GE management team for Digital

A course correction – dealing with missteps, calling “time outs” and tightening the scope is today’s need

There are numerous course corrections taking place within the Digital division and Predix. To quote

So there is no change in GE’s belief in the digital future- the “adjustments” they are making will take GE from being the “first mover” into more of a “fast follower” as it continues to ‘double down’ and start delivering on the promises it has made or the real promise that still does lie in Predix as a solution. The ultimate shift within GE Digital will be that its resources will go into their fastest-selling markets.

Todays GE Digital Predix Model

GE in taking leadership in defining, developing and building the Industrial Internet (IIoT) has shaken the cobwebs out of many of its competitors. Seeing that a potential IIoT market at $225 billion by 2020 just cannot be ignored, it needs a response, a measured response.

Why measured in response?

Even though GE and Predix have been pioneering much within the market, others have been these “fast learners” to catch up and avoid a number of the costly mistakes made by GE. We are seeing thoughtful responses to the platform-as-a-service, from the likes of Siemens, ABB, Schneider Electrics, Bosch (all discussed here in this site) and more restrained digital models from Honeywell, Emerson, Ericsson and many others. Each is learning as they go. They all have, including GE,  a very long way to go and I will be exploring that in future posts and featured articles on IIoT.

In the meantime, GE absorbs its ‘course corrections’. Predix I gather is more stable and focused. A partnership with Microsoft Azure, there has been a constant shift in GE digital leadership as well. The business is shifting from a software dominated, Silicon Valley diet into a Corporate one. What that will mean in a change from being a ” pioneering leader” into being part of a “hunting pack” alongside your competitors and their digital offering is yet to play out. As GE’s competitors take aim at the prize of digital it makes for a very different “maturing phase” of the IIoT market. We are seeing a number of nimble start-ups pushing to nibble away at a vast array of gaps in solutions provided.

Predix, the GE digital division might seem vulnerable, as it might equally get caught up in the selling off the pressure that GE group are under to “right the GE ship” but it can’t afford any more digital mishaps. Getting the Predix platform-as-a-service right and at the scale and scope of its client’s needs, not their own is a real challenge.

Speed is still important, responsiveness in a dynamic technology evolving marketplace will still remain crucial but if GE digital does learn how to “double down” and focus on delivering performance that its clients want then Predix will pay off really handsomely.

Yet it is going to be a difficult transition period, with so much “snapping at its heels” in internal decisions of GE’s assets, the competitive threats that are absorbing digital in their own ways and learning what digital platforms can deliver to GE’s growth and immediate cash needs.

What all within IIoT and their digital platforms need to learn is, the platform can provide but it does need to understand and listen well to the Ecosystem that ‘feeds’ this platform. Presently I don’t think ANY have got beyond stage one in this Ecosystem thinking, even if they talk the word. Still, that view can be left for another day.

Even in the Predix -powered world there Ecosystem is not rich enough

Platforms may be central to performance but they are not the center, as this GE visual projects. The Ecosystem design is far more relevant and necessary. This tends to be far more supply sided not demand-needed.

Predix was a pioneer, will it be in the future?

It is most striking but GE Digital was the opening part of the 2016 Annual Report. It was glowing with optimism. In the 2017 Annual Report, it hardly gets a mention! It is not even reviewed as a division. You can argue “oh how the mighty have fallen” but beware “digital can eat far more before breakfast“, including today’s’ prescribed new strategy.

It remains for me and many, many others, to thank those that took a vision of the Industrial Internet, who made it a real mission, one that had a total believer in the ex-GE CEO and gave us Predix, a platform that has kick-started the Industrial Internet.

The pioneering was expensive, littered with many missteps and learning but it can still pay off really well for Predix and the GE digital path if it chooses this well. GE played a major part in establishing the IIoT is a reality and still provides a real market opportunity, one that is poised to be exploited as much of the investment has hopefully been made.

Where we are today, a full-blown GE crisis is down to GE management to fix. Even though GE and Digital have taken a real bruising it still provides a powerful base for re-engaging and hopefully not relegated to the back-office, just supporting. GE Digital and Predix specifically still needs to lead not follow.

Now we are at the point where the market will decide on what value it gets out of this rapidly connected IIoT world. An awful lot if its predicted worth is based on the market growing to $225 billion by 2020, and the prospect of connecting your physical business with a real digital growth path is highly attractive. I think GE through its Predix platform will play a continued major role, unless it is decided to sell it off, as part of the shoring up of the rest of GE.

I finish on this point.  The Dynamics of any ecosystem design are ones that always have winners and losers, that is what evolution is all about. Others might be stronger to prosper and grow as GE adjusts to their new world of reality, forced only on themselves, as first-mover advantage fades into the distance and the pack had the time to catch-up.

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I’ve looked at Bosch and its IoT suite, Siemens and its Mindsphere, GE and its Predix platform, and Schneider Electrics with its Ecostruxure to begin to explore and understand their digital platform offering. I do need to revisit GE and its Predix platform with recent changes occurring inside the company.

I then wrote a summary of the fact that Industry is lagging but catching up in its choices of platform offering, taking three of these examples and how just within a few months this seems to be accelerating into a real race of the IIoT digital platforms to seize competitive advantage as well as I term it “taking the IIoT hill” to make sure customers align with them. A digital industrial application offering has increasingly become central to growth for many of the infrastructure providers.

This post is about ABB and their ABB Ability to offer a common platform across the industries they serve of a digital end-to-end set of solutions.

ABB has been investing in building their ‘digital operations’ to control, interrogate and modify the operational task in response to the external signals, mostly through distributed sensors. The aim is to transform clients activities more into software-driven activity, where the operational results in identifying trends and possible failure modes and equally, how they can transform the whole maintenance regime, to reduce downtime and anticipate potential failure.

ABB has a fairly powerful business case for being a trusted partner.

They claim to have  “an installed base of more than 70,000 control systems connecting 70 million devices we have been providing digitally connected and enabled systems for a long time. A growing and exciting market we serve is the global data center industry. We are working with some of our customers in revolutionizing data center energy optimization, offering smart grid connections, off-grid electrification, power protection, and power management software. Central to the company’s strategy is integrating its power optimization systems with sensor-enabled products. The goal is to create a data-driven, intelligently automated solution that balances data center operations with the most cost-efficient power sources in real-time to maximize data center power efficiency for its customers. Intelligently connected IT reduces costs and optimizes the data center resources”. source: The case for IoT ABB

First, the sectors that ABB serve

So firstly let’s summarize ABB Ability

Integrated into the ABB Ability portfolio as ABB Ability Symphony® Plus.

ABB Ability Symphony Plus is a distributed control system designed to maximize plant efficiency and reliability through automation, integration, and optimization of the entire plant. ABB has been evolving this Symphony concept for over 35 years both with new generation enhancing as well as backward compatibility of “evolution without obsolescence” they are putting a continued store on product life-cycle management, by focusing increasing on control technology innovation and harnessing it to the digital revolution in their  ABB Ability platform. The distributed control system (DCS) is central to their client offerings for power generation and water treatment for example. ABB has more than 6,800 Symphony DCS installations in operation all over the world and more than 4,800 of which are in power and water applications.

To quote from their website: Automation Sentinel remains the key program for life cycle system support as customers continue to upgrade and evolve their installed systems to our latest generation offerings. For power generation and water, Automation Sentinel is available via ABB Power Generation Care and ABB Water Care, offering a complete service that raises the performance of the plant’s automation and electrical assets, its operations, and maintenance staff, and the production process during the life cycle of the facility”.

To continue on what the ABB Ability Symphony Plus embodies: “it offers the essential components of a closed-loop system: sense – analyze – act, in a continuous, repetitive way”. The shift is underway to focus more on the autonomous future and a more perceive – understand – solve becomes the closed loop cycle.

Data is collected from the controlled system, the data is analyzed to gain knowledge of whether the system is behaving according to the expectations, and action is taken, if required, to influence the system’s behavior to match the expectations. As a result of a closed loop operation, the outcome will meet the set target.

Many Internet of Things (IoT) approaches focus on data collection (sense) and analysis. However, ABB is pointing out that all the value is finally generated in the physical world. Energy, material, or time is saved, or more is produced. Therefore, the knowledge gained from the analysis has to be put into action, i.e. the improvement has to be implemented.  Only by closing this loop, the value is created.

ABB provides an excellent visual of the current challenges and changes facing utilities

It is increasingly through digital solutions they can help break down some of these challenges facing the utilities. The collapse in the demand has been creating real problems for GE, Seimens, and ABB. ABB are suggesting that power and water companies that embrace digitalization gain more than 10% in productivity, maintenance and reliability improvements whereas those that neglect digitalization gain only 1 to 2% improvements.

Last year, 2017, Frost and Sullivan named ABB its 2017 Global DCS company of the year through its pioneering and leadership in the digitalization of the energy industry.The whole game is collaboration in today’s market and ABB are pushing to provide the edge over others.

The race to be top of the IIoT digital platform hill is hotting up – watch the elbows and back-stabbing.

There is this race up the digital platform offering “hill” to get greater collaborations with customers, to achieve a certain lock-in” effect as the eventual rewards are huge.

Research firm IDC forecasts that worldwide spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) will grow to $1.4 trillion in 2021 from an expected $800 billion in 2017. The largest investments are being made in areas such as manufacturing, transportation, and utilities, carving out the IIoT part as a big investment need and opportunity.

The fusing in with the emerging Industry 4.0 business ecosystem becomes important to understand as well, as it has profound implications.  I have discussed in the revolution, platforms, digital and the huge impact on business in the future what is making this a very essential ‘race’ to be there, in amongst the IIoT digital platform winners. The prize is very big to be a winner.

It is interesting that all I have reviewed so far are partnering with Microsoft Azure

So to tap into the opportunities of the IoT or IIoT, companies are investing in new solutions that digitize their industrial equipment and integrate it with their broader IT environments. This is the race we are currently seeing between all suppliers of manufacturing equipment and services, my race up the IIoT digital platform hill.

The question is making the right strategic investment choices in the digital offering. What solutions are you wanting to solve with the digital offerings?

ABB are jostling to be at the front but it is a crowded leading pack

Apart from Bosch, Siemens, GE, Schneider Electrics there are plenty of others. The real offerings have only been significantly emerging in the past few years. GE and Predix lead the pack for a long time. To be honest I am not sure who is leading, who is deciding to run a different race as they recognize their value, limitations, and places to effectively compete. More will emerge on this in the months and years ahead, from me and plenty of others, seeing this digital platform race.

The above is a visual of the Data Centre Core ABB offer within their platform solution offering.

Strategic Partnerships will be essential to the winning solutions

ABB have tied in with HPE in a strategic partnership that combines ABB’s industry-leading digital offerings, ABB Ability^TM, with HPE’s innovative hybrid information technology (IT) solutions. The partnership will provide customers with solutions that generate actionable insights from vast amounts of industrial data to increase the efficiency and flexibility of their operations and create competitive advantage.

It is interesting that all platforms I have reviewed so far are partnering primarily with Microsoft Azure. I wonder why AWS is not so prominent here. I need to look into this and understand it a little better.

Back to HPE & ABB to quote from a press release ABB and HPE bring intelligence to industrial plants

“Customers will benefit from ABB’s deep domain expertise in operations technologies (OT) and HPE’s leadership in information technologies (IT). ABB and HPE will deliver joint industry solutions that merge OT and IT to turn industrial data into insights and automatic action, combining widely-adopted cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure with IT systems running in corporate data centers and at the edge of the network. Employing the right mix of IT platforms will accelerate data processing in industrial plants and at the same time enable effective control of industrial processes across locations”

“This strategic partnership marks the next level of the digital industrial transformation. Together, we will bring intelligence from cloud-based solutions to on-premises deployments in industrial plants and data centers for greater uptime, speed, and yield,” said ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer. “ABB and HPE will deliver solutions that span the entire range of computing required by enterprises today, from the edge to the cloud to the core.”

These partnership races are aiming to (quote): will shape a digital industrial future where everything computes, equipping machines with intelligence to collaborate, allowing plants to flexibly adapt to changing demands, and enabling global supply chains to instantaneously react to incidents.

HPE and ABB are aiming to provide a true end-to-end experience for customers, that will include co-innovation, co-development, joint go to market and service between them.

So in summary

So ABB Ability is their unified, cross-industry digital capability platform that is extending the device and sensors built into it to the edge, into the cloud with all the devices, systems, solutions, services and the platform for “customers to know more, do more and do better” in more collaborative ways, offering a common offering for digital end-to-end solutions.

Research notes and sources: The material used came from ABB sites and the quotes used are from different sources of their websites on the subject of ABB Ability or associated offerings.

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I just wish I had reviewed these guys a lot sooner. Schneider Electric has been on my radar for reviewing their platform for some time.

Schneider is in among the leaders in the digital transformation of Energy Management and Automation of homes, buildings, data centers, infrastructure and a range of industries.

They hold a commanding position in Power Management in Medium and Low voltage, Secure power, in critical power and cooling, grid automation, industrial and building automation and controls and providing discrete automation process systems.

Schneider Electric has been constantly providing integrated efficiency solutions for many years, well before platforms became fashionable.

They are constantly seeking to combine energy, automation, and software. They have adopted a very open ecosystem approach collaborating with partners, integrators and the developer community to build an open platform to deliver real-time control and operational efficiency

Schneider Electric is not set up as a glamorous company, they provide the essentials; such as boxes, enclosures, protect relays, cabling, control, switchgear, metering, racks, breaker switches. The list goes on and on. They operate in 100 countries and set out to find the most efficient and agile ways to foster innovation.

I get the real impression they have taken innovation to the core of what they do and I often can’t say that for many companies I review – more’s the pity.

They compete with the likes of other global heavyweights like ABB, Siemens, Rockwell, Emerson, and Eaton. They have a global business that breaks down to 28% in North America, 27% in Western Europe, 27% in Asia-Pacific and 18% in the Rest-of-the-World. Present revenue is around 25b Euro’s and employees 144,000 people.

What I wanted to investigate was their approach to delivering IoT solutions that connect, collect and analyze and then, as they drive home “act upon” in real-time. They look at every level of achieving connected products, having “edge” control and providing apps, analytics, and services into their client ecosystem, at every turn. They have embraced mobility, sensing, cloud, analytics and cybersecurity technologies to look towards safety, efficiency, and sustainability.

Schneider Electric’s digital backbone lies in their EcoStruxure platform.

My impression is Schneider Electric do not overly complicate what they offer.

They work on three primary areas of platform focus.

Connected products such as basic “kit” required in our industrial and global world. Breakers, drives, UPSs, relays, sensors all are devices that have embedded intelligence to help in vital decision-making throughout the effectiveness and efficiency of operations.

The second focal area is Edge Control, by controlling devices at the edge of IoT networks is becoming a must, they provide protection in the broader network and deliver better “uptime” by being connected.

The third area of focus is apps, analytics, and services. The magic word of “interoperability” is there to build and support the vast array of hardware and systems; in buildings, data centers, industry and grid-end markets.

EcoStruxure provides a breadth of agnostic applications working to anticipate, know and support, provide analytics and a wide array of services, to make the collaborative effect of having as a seamless enterprise integration as is possible for the delivering to the specific client’s needs.

Their approach to the digital architecture

Through their Digital Architecture, they are working on providing an end-to-end solution that balance shared components within the ecosystem of partners and the agility that comes with their domain-specific expertise. They have been constantly architecting at scale for data connection, person connection and aggregation. The focus, which I like, is all about integrating the asset (device) and customer identity in their unique needs and situations. The offering of the cloud to the edge as the end-to-end need, to leverage the services onto the product, fully and effectively. They regard this as their “connectivity value.”

I can clearly see for them to get to this point they have made a considerable investment in R&D. I saw they have 17,000 patents in their portfolio, they seem to be filing a constant 1,000-odd a year, new patents being filed. They have somewhere upwards of 8,000 R&D engineers, including over 2,000 software engineers. They presently are investing about 5% of sales into R&D. They work with a range of system integrator partners to deliver the platform and the solutions “that sit” on the platform or within the products they offer. This is what delivers much of the connectivity value, within a network of partners.

It is where innovation figures strongly in how they approach this

The language of innovation comes across in what I read and researched. They understand that the shift is from products to customer outcomes and it is through digitization and consuming that information is critical, so as then to turn into actionable outcomes based on product and services. With customers not just wanting to buy software, they are wanting today, to subscribe to those that offer solutions, such as software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service, security-as-a-service etc.etc. This requires a very needed trusted partnership and deeper relationship that builds constantly in the exchanges, collaborations, and joint solution seeking.

They have moved from selling the part into guaranteeing the better outcome. The underlying story of the value of connected products, platforms, IoT, digitization, and ecosystems combining.

I “lifted” this visual of their innovation principles as they are worth sharing.

Again, it seems they are very proactive in their anticipation and investment horizons

They have embraced the three horizon method, in drawing out different voices, which I totally subscribe too, in looking at new insights and managing existing core by balancing this with breaking technologies.They work the 3H for searching for desired outcomes and track, track and track, all things emerging if it is important to their “seen” future or might be disruptive or ground-breaking for changes.

The other aspect that comes clearly into view is the recognition of the whole value of operating on a platform solution enables the leveraging of people, insights, and data. This ‘forms and informs’ to help in making not just the present but also the future. If you can imagine the sheer level of activity a global organization needs to coordinate, having a common platform you can apply learnings once (hopefully) and work on ten new solutions or applications, reflecting the diversity of industry need or technology application.

In one document I read on Schneider’s website they are giving data a voice and the key is listening to that voice.

This is why a platform has become so critical today, it connects clients, partners, customers, technicians, researchers, and management for more informed decision-making. You innovate with efficiency and agility.

I liked also the thought they track outside their industry peers. They see products have moved from being 100% hardware to a somewhat changed value proposition of 60% hardware and 40% software. They look to borrow concepts from the global software R&D into their products and solutions by using lean and agile approaches by building minimal viable products and test these with key customers. The learning then comes back into the next design of the product, partly by doing software upgrades, .looking for speed and agility to push these out into the field, on-site and in new versions.

I was reading about their oil and gas customers. A very tough business at the best of time, more so in today’s market conditions. They see “augmented solutions” in speed and responsiveness, delivering durability and endurance and achieving greater control through greater ‘on devise’ visibility and strategy for mission-critical events to make essential decisions to optimize and minimize downtime.

Summary.

So Schneider has taken to heart the ‘holistic’ message of connected intelligence, working on speed and agility, building in durability and endurance into what they provide, along with a high level of visibility and clarity does seem to give them their ongoing competitive edge. Of course, they expect and try to anticipate next-generation automation advancements in what they do and anticipate, but it is the ongoing recognition of working through a platform and connecting into the ecosystem, fully collaborating, does certainly seem to have given them a formidable positioning for themselves. One for the connected future, based on platform and ecosystem management.

Sources of reference

https://www.schneider-electric.com/ww/en/

https://blog.schneider-electric.com/

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