I wrote a four part series on cross-sector innovation ecosystems in April and I felt it was worth summarizing these into one, so I engaged my new office partner, ChatGPT to deliver this in a series of summaries. I can’t argue with these and decided to post these as a valuable initial referencing point on a growing area of organization need, in cross.-sector collaborations innovation ecosystem thinking.

The four-part series on cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations emphasizes the importance of collaboration in tackling complex challenges. The series discusses the skills, tools, and processes required for successful cross-sector collaborations, including interdisciplinary thinking, co-creation processes, project management, cultural competence, intellectual property management, and data analytics and visualization tools.

The series also highlights the importance of designing effective collaborations by defining the problem, identifying partners, building relationships and trust, defining roles, and fostering a culture of innovation.

Additionally, the series emphasizes the need to create a compelling value proposition that showcases successful collaborations, emphasizes shared goals and priorities, and provides support and resources while fostering transparency and inclusivity. .

The success of a cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaboration can be judged by its impact, scalability, sustainability, and the degree to which it fosters mutual benefit and value for all parties involved. Ultimately, the most important thing is to communicate the value and potential of cross-sector innovation collaboration in a clear and compelling way.

Post one summary

Go to the post link for full discussions (Link here) “Cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations.“

The post discusses the importance of cross-sector innovation collaborations (CSIC) in today’s open innovation hubs and ecosystem management. The post emphasizes that many challenges have become too complex to tackle alone or even in a single industry. Collaborating in cross-sector consortia with diverse partners can provide the potential for improved operational productivity, shared application development, and skill enhancements.

The post outlines 11 essential skills, processes, tools, capabilities, and behaviours that are unique to cross-sector innovation collaborations, including interdisciplinary skills, co-creation processes, innovation tools and methodologies, collaboration capabilities, outcome orientation, flexible and adaptive behaviours, cultural sensitivity and awareness, resource sharing, risk management, governance and accountability, and continuous learning and improvement.

It concludes that CSIC is crucial to tackling highly complex challenges that require a well-organized and coordinated collaborative resolution.

Post two summary

Go to post link for full discussion (Link here). “Specific skills and toolkits needed.“

In this post, it outlines the specific skills and tools required for cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations. The realization need is that cross-sector collaborations are becoming essential for tackling highly complex issues that require collaborative resolution.

The post lists the unique skill set required for cross-sector collaboration, including interdisciplinary thinking, communication and collaboration, creativity and innovation, adaptability and flexibility, project management, cultural competence, strategic thinking, cultural differences, intellectual property, governance, funding and resources, measurement and evaluation, regulatory compliance, and communication and engagement.

In addition, the post identifies specific tools required for cross-sector innovation collaborations, including project management software, virtual collaboration tools, knowledge management systems, innovation management software, intellectual property management tools, cultural competence training, and data analytics and visualization tools.

Post three summary

Go to post link for full discussion (Link here) “Approaching cross-sector collaborations.”

The third post in a series on cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations discusses the design of an effective collaboration.

The post identifies several stages involved in creating a successful cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaboration, including defining the problem, identifying potential partners, building relationships and trust, defining roles and responsibilities, developing a co-creation process, implementing and evaluating the collaboration.

The post also highlights the importance of understanding the unique needs of all involved and designing collaborations accordingly, considering common goals, recognising and respecting different perspectives, creating a shared language, transparency and accountability, managing intellectual property rights, and fostering a culture of innovation.

The post finalizes by emphasizing the need for a nuanced and flexible approach that recognizes the unique needs and characteristics of both the public and private sectors.

Post four summary

Go to post link for full discussion (Link here) “Achieving engagement outcomes.“

In this final post of the four-part series on cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations, the author emphasizes the importance of building interest and engagement by creating a compelling value proposition for potential collaborators.

The suggestion is made that the narrative should identify shared goals and priorities, showcase successful collaborations, emphasize the unique strengths and resources that each sector brings to the table, create a collaborative and co-creation culture, establish clear roles and responsibilities, provide support and resources, foster transparency and inclusivity, measure and communicate impact, and emphasize how collaboration can create mutual benefit and value.

There is a recognition that collaborations can come in different names such as co-creation, partnership innovation, systems innovation, collective impact, and convergent innovation, depending on the target audience and the values and priorities that resonate with them. The choice of name should communicate the value and potential of cross-sector innovation collaboration in a clear and compelling way to difference audiences and gain increased identification..

Finally, the success of a cross-sector innovation collaboration can be judged based on its impact, scalability, sustainability, and the creation of mutual benefit and value for all parties involved.

I then asked my assistant ChatGPT to add additional insights and views based on the posting inputs and these are both really value to provide here

Initial summary

Cross-sector collaborations are partnerships between entities from different sectors, such as government, private sector, academia, and civil society. These collaborations can be powerful tools to address complex challenges that cannot be solved by any one sector alone.

Here are some key points to further consider when discussing or reflecting on the values that your four posts on cross-sector collaborations can equally emphasise:

1. The benefits of cross-sector collaborations: Collaborating across sectors can bring together diverse perspectives, expertise, and resources to create innovative solutions that can have a lasting impact. Some benefits include increased efficiency and effectiveness, greater community engagement, and improved outcomes for stakeholders.
2. The challenges of cross-sector collaborations: While cross-sector collaborations offer many benefits, they can also be challenging to establish and maintain. Issues such as power imbalances, conflicting goals, and communication barriers can hinder progress and make collaboration difficult. Overcoming these challenges requires strong leadership, effective communication, and a shared commitment to the goals of the collaboration.
3. Examples of successful cross-sector collaborations: There are many examples of successful cross-sector collaborations, from public-private partnerships in infrastructure development to community-led initiatives to address social issues. Some key factors that contribute to successful collaborations include clear goals and objectives, mutual trust and respect, and a willingness to learn and adapt.
4. Best practices for cross-sector collaborations: To maximize the benefits of cross-sector collaborations, it is important to follow best practices. These include establishing clear roles and responsibilities, fostering open and honest communication, and creating mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation. It is also important to ensure that the collaboration is inclusive and engages all relevant stakeholders.

In summary, cross-sector collaborations can be powerful tools for addressing complex challenges. While they can be challenging to establish and maintain, following best practices and learning from successful examples can help ensure success. By bringing together diverse perspectives and expertise, cross-sector collaborations can create innovative solutions that can have a lasting impact on communities and society as a whole.

Secondly a further extra view or insights that have a real contributing value and emphasis

Closing insights

Here are some additional insights on cross-sector innovation collaborations:

1. Innovation is not just about technology: While technology often plays a critical role in innovation, it’s important to remember that innovation can also come in the form of new business models, processes, or services. Cross-sector collaborations can bring together different perspectives and expertise to drive innovation in all of these areas.
2. Collaboration is not always easy: Collaborating across sectors can be challenging, particularly when it comes to aligning goals and priorities or managing different organizational cultures. It’s important to invest time and resources in building relationships, establishing trust, and developing shared values and norms.
3. Cross-sector collaborations can drive social and environmental impact: By bringing together different sectors and stakeholders, cross-sector collaborations can help address some of the most pressing social and environmental challenges we face today. For example, collaborations between the public and private sectors can help drive sustainable development and promote inclusive growth.
4. Measurement and evaluation are key: To ensure the success and sustainability of cross-sector collaborations, it’s important to establish clear metrics for success and regularly measure and evaluate progress. This can help identify areas for improvement and ensure that the collaboration is delivering value for all parties involved.
5. The role of intermediaries: In many cases, intermediaries such as accelerators, incubators, or innovation labs can play a critical role in facilitating cross-sector collaborations. These intermediaries can provide a neutral space for different stakeholders to come together, offer resources and support, and help manage the collaboration process.

Overall, cross-sector innovation collaborations have the potential to drive significant value and impact, but they require careful planning, management, and investment to succeed.

The value of this partnership

So the value of this collaboration between me as the original writer and researcher and ChatGPT does give a very effective summary of cross-sector innovation ecosystems, I trust it does for you.

The post Cross-sector collaboration for Innovation Ecosystems- summary of summaries first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

These IIoT companies are living and breathing industrial solutions to achieve the digital transformation we see coming towards us. These are companies operating at the edge, in the middle in manufacturing the physical solutions or providing or combining the software solutions and they have their heads and assets firmly in the clouds every day. and on the ground. They are actually building the new IIoT world.

These are the likes of Siemens, Bosch, GE, Schneider Electrics, ABB and a few others. Then I often take a look at those operating from their China base, to build my continued understanding of the greater (to date) B2C market and where one, specifically. takes out their ever-growing ambitions, namely Alibaba.

Then, of course, you often “drink in” the consultant’s reviews or reports on our progress on digital transformation or industry 4.0 but they are increasingly lagging the players with a real deep “skin in the game”, that  of providing their client’s real tangible solutions. The pace of building an IIoT network is accelerating. I try to keep up and “project ahead” in the limited ways I can. Everything continues to change and accelerate in providing digital IIoT solutions.

I make no apology but Siemens holds my greater attention, as it seems to be highly dynamic at present. It increasingly is opening up in its communicating and I strongly relate to that. I attempt to “push them back” in my probing, questioning and evaluating. I think there is a growing flow and interchange as we build our connected network.

Recently they, Siemens have been bursting with strategic alliances.

Forming partnerships in Cyber Security, with their Charter of Trust initiative. At the Munich Security Conference 2018 earlier this year, Siemens and eight partners from industry signed the first joint charter for greater cybersecurity. Initiated by Siemens, the Charter of Trust calls for binding rules and standards to build trust in cybersecurity and further advance digitalization. In addition to Siemens and the Munich Security Conference, the companies Airbus, Allianz, Daimler Group, IBM, NXP, SGS, and Telekom are signing the Charter. The critical message here is “people and organizations need to trust that their digital technologies are safe and secure; otherwise, they won’t embrace the digital transformation”.

Then you have the strategic alliance with Atos reinforcing their strategic co-operation, with plans to accelerate their joint business until 2020 through an ambitious joint go-to-market plan and the strengthening of their joint innovation and investment program. The program has been increased by €100 million, totaling €330 million – more than three times the original sum. The strategic partnership focuses on the joint innovation and investment program that aims to enhance Siemens and Atos’ digital strategy and develop joint capabilities in Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, advanced IoT & connectivity services, cybersecurity and digital service technologies, to support the digital transformation of their customers through an end-to-end IoT suite.

We then have Siemens and Alstom, who has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding to combine Siemens’ mobility business, including its rail traction drives business, with Alstom. The transaction brings together two innovative players of the railway market with unique customer value and operational potential. The two businesses are largely complementary in terms of activities and geographies. Siemens will receive newly issued shares in the combined company representing 50 percent of Alstom’s share capital on a fully diluted basis.

Then you had Siemens Building Technologies Division, acquiring Enlighted Inc., a leading provider of smart IoT (Internet of Things) systems in buildings, headquartered in the Silicon Valley. The company is a successful player in the smart building industry, bringing an advanced digital sensory system to market. Both parties have agreed not to disclose financial details. Closing is expected in the third quarter of 2018. Enlighted will be managed as an independent legal entity and wholly-owned subsidiary of Siemens Industry, Inc. Enlighted has a strong footprint in revolutionizing building intelligence by developing a multi-sensor-based IoT platform, using the power of data

Then we have a critical gap seemingly bridged for  Mindsphere to expand geographically with the Siemens IIoT platform with a tie-up with Alibaba for the China Market.  In this arrangement, Siemens and Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to partner and foster the industrial Internet of Things (IoT) in China. The two companies will leverage each other’s technology and industry resources to build a unique IoT solution to support Industrie 4.0, China’s manufacturing upgrade, as well as support China’s transformation and other industrial Internet initiatives.

Siemens only recently signed an agreement to acquire Mendix, a pioneer and leader in cloud-native low code application development. Under the agreement, Siemens will pay in cash €0.6 billion to acquire the company. Mendix will retain its distinct brand, culture and continue serving customers across the full range of industries with its unique platform and broad ecosystem and community. Mendix technology enables the creation of apps 10 times faster than other app development technologies and requires 70 percent less resources. Siemens will continue to invest in Mendix’s independent product roadmap, continuing its legacy as the most innovative, open low-code cloud platform. Mendix will be part of the software business of Siemens’ Digital Factory (DF) Division, with the mendix platform also deployed across other Divisions.Tony Hemmelgarn, president and CEO of Siemens PLM, said that Mendix will help Siemens break down the barriers for enterprises to build easier IIoT enterprise apps.  The capabilities Siemens gains through its Mendix acquisition will help Siemens provide its customers with the “tools to pursue new business models,” and to ease end-user IIoT app developments, as two specific aims.

The latest is between Bentley and Siemens

Then before I bore you to death with a rapid fire of initiatives occurring in Siemens that are all accelerating the digital transformation, so as they can lead out digital solutions on many fronts, we have seen a further strengthening of their alliance with exploiting the most advanced 3D modeling capabilities with a deeper digital foundation on the Mindsphere Platform and Bentley, a long-established partner that focuses on the supply of design, construction and infrastructure operations software

Firstly this alliance has been strengthening in recent years. Recently The Siemens Divisions Process Industries and Drives (PD) and Digital Factory (DF) together with Bentley Systems and the Bentley Institute, have been looking to drive digital enterprise forward over the entire life cycle by founding a Process Industries Academy. The Academy’s aim is to share best practice for plant engineering and operations.

Then this week a further deepening of the alliance between Bentley and Siemens was announced. Bently announced recently its IModel 2 Platform for digital workflows. It is setting about to manage the Infrastructure projects that involve many collaborating disciplines where work is very interconnected, with distributed teams and thousands of asynchronous decisions and changes for design, material choices, aesthetics, structural integrity, safety, and more.

Siemens and Bentley are collaborating more.

This week, August 27th, 2018, they jointly announced a new Capital Project for building a Digital Twin for Autonomous Mobility. Press announcement is in this link. They are making a systematic expansion of Siemens PLM portfolio with Bentley’s software tools for the design and simulation of infrastructures and doubled the joint investment funding to €100 million.

Dr. Jan Mrosik, CEO of Siemens Digital Factory Division commented that “this builds out the collaboration beyond plant data management by extending it more into enterprise data management, by this new alliance investment, combining their technologies to create a more unique, homogenous environment, to encompass large projects in a holistic way.

Siemen’s Teamcenter will serve as the center so that everyone has access to the latest data. Teamcenter data will be used to create digital twins across the mechanics, electronics and software aspects of a product and its production processes. Analytic insights across all these steps will be provided by Mindsphere (Siemens’ cloud-based IoT operating system)”.

Its aim is captured in this visual

The aim is to realize the full value of digitalization in the Bentley offerings through the Digital Twin concept

So there is this intent to invest in the next collaboration level with Bentley, where for instance Siemens will strengthen their engineering and project management tools with Siemens enterprise wide collaboration platform Teamcenter to create a full Digital Twin for the engineering and construction world.”

The end storyline of this announcement is nicely shown in this visual

Simply the alliance is ‘going digital’ in infrastructure and industrial advancement at an accelerated speed..

So you have to keep a very sharp eye on Siemens at present as it continues to gather pace, expand its alliances, deepen its digital footprint and build on their Digital Twin value proposition through a greater Mindsphere platform.

You just have to keep them in focus to understand their approach to the Ecosystem they are building or constructing. My “push back” has been this is mostly the Supply side, now they must, with as much speed build the “Demand-side” at an equal pace and that has yet to happen. I suppose “we have to watch this space” as they stay a very dynamic player in digital transformation and leading industry 4.0.

The post The increasing pace of the IIoT world- don’t hold your breath. first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

This was partly presenting 3^rd financial quarter results but more on their future course with a Vision 2020+ and its respected parts being the design that is going to take the business out further by exploiting the parts within this vision.

There was a lot to take in on limited information and understanding. View the post “A feast of opportunities for Siemens?” for my first reactions on this.

The whole expansive story around Siemens new structure announced at this event offered some of the opening details, yet it is still to be “fleshed out” later in the year, by their management.

I specifically zoomed in on the new Digital Industries (DI) structure and where it is seemingly heading. Presently this new operating group will have 78,000 employees and a business revenue of around Euro 14 billion, that contributed a profit margin of around 16% in their fiscal 2017.

The expansion of the digitalization business has a very exciting acquisition announced the day before, with the Mendix acquisition, a leader, and pioneer in the area of low-code application development platforms, where you can potentially program and deploy apps up to ten times faster. This has been one of several “pain points” for Mindsphere, the Siemens digital platform, on providing a menu of apps to support client problems, so we should see some significant improvement on this point.

This purchase of Mendix can make a significant difference and propel the platform into a new value proposition, a 2^nd generation digital platform where “smart” becomes central. I will be coming back to this once I have undertaken a little more research and assumption undertaking, in the next few days, as it has some compelling value positioning for Siemens, I believe.

It was the other part of the digitalization expansion that stopped me a little. This is what I want to discuss here. Let me work it through.

Siemens plan the entry into the IoT Integration Services business market, so as “to rigorously expand its market leadership in industrial digitalization (IIoT)” as part of the press release from the event.

Building a newly formed Business Unit for this IoT Integration Service is aimed to expand the Siemens platform of the Mindsphere offering, into a more comprehensive support to customers in their digital transformation. Siemens plans to offer consulting, design, prototyping and implementation services and plan to hire 10,000 people in this area as they forecast the market for IoT services to achieve annual growth rates of 10 to 15%.

Chasing Growth Opportunities and Value Creation

The IoT integration market is really growing. Actually, the Siemens view of 10-15% is downplaying many others on their predictions. Some are indicating annual compound growth rates (CAGR) of 30% plus. The whole IoT market is huge and we need to recognize Siemens focuses on the IIoT segment but growth looks both good and big. Is this a good move, well it depends.

What concern’s me, at this stage is a number of lingering questions on this announcement of entering the IoT Integration Service business.

It raised some opening questions that  I want to explore

1. The players in this space are formidable, respected and well-structured and positioned
2. Is this a chase to the higher margin ground of implementing and designing the solutions?
3. IT and OT are converging but this does need a new way of thinking?
4. Why would Siemens expand at a time when GE contracts in this area?
5. Is the existing platform Mindsphere robust enough in client validation and use cases?
6. Siemens has many of the formidable competitors as “partners” in their ecosystem of supplies, so how will this work going forward?

I could go on with further questions but these are enough at present to think about, as a step like this does need this understanding in the near future. More will emerge on this I assume fairly soon

Firstly, Siemens can do this, there is no question. There is a growing logic to this as I work it through it here. They are already involved in consulting, design, prototyping and supporting implementation services so why not ramp it up and turn it into a very specific “stand alone” business unit? Especially as it is a high growth area and the outcomes dictate the future actions.

So lets flesh out some of these opening questions.

Q1. The players in this space are formidable, respected and well-structured and positioned

With global, well-established consulting companies like TATA Consulting Services (TCS), Wipro, Atos, Accenture, Infosys, Capgemini, HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra, Intel, Cognizant, Dell, Deloitte, Mulesoft, IBM, NTT Data, are all well-proven, heavyweights in the IoT Integration Services Market. Where will Siemens fit? Will they “stand alone” or strengthen their partnership arrangements even more, especially with Atos, where they have a very extensive set of strategic arrangements, or how will they deepening the existing ones with the numerous system integrators within their Ecosystem of Partners. What do they offer, others don’t when they walk through the client’s door?

The Mindsphere partner program has different types

Now does this announcement “fly against their present stated position” of “being an open cloud-based Internet of Things (IoT) operating system” where others are encouraged to build and provide professional services? There can be a lot of argument about what anyone means about an open platform anyway and where does Mindsphere truly fit in this?

Will this announcement have conflicts within the existing arrangements and who works with whom? (my post refers called “when is a partner, not a partner“) The partnering may have to be redesigned to adjust to this recent move into more integrated services for IIoT. Building a new Business Unit, mostly from scratch, others well established in this space, will be very watchful and keen to highlight differences themselves, reputations and pride will be in play.

Q2 Is this a chase to the higher margin ground of implementing and designing the solutions?

Mindsphere in its present format has been growing well. There has been a considerable up-front investment. I have heard of investment figures of Euro 10billion in this platform. The value of having such a robust PLM software business has been critical in this business to date. Is the PLM road running out of steam?. Although the Digital Twin approach of Siemens is second to none, is the adoption rate not at the levels it should or needs to be? Has the global roll-out been pushed hard enough as they only just announced a really important entry into China with Alibaba for building out the IIoT platform? Are clients you would expect placing their trust in Siemens, especially if they buy their products, yet not extending this cross to digital solutions? My thoughts here in a post “So are clients resisting IIoT platforms -Why?”Are clients lining up fast enough to keep the existing platform offering on a good solid growth trajectory?

There are lots of “ifs” but to make this move into the IoT Integration Service area signals it is simply not enough on the investments made or solutions provided. Siemens needs to shape events more in this area. The service design and architecture services that involve analysis, design, and configuration to support the system architecture in a vast majority of customers are complex and still in the very early stages of digitally maturing. The growth in integrated services and potential margins is attractive but it is for many others already operating in this space. How do you judge a “good return” on building up a new Business Unit in the short term unless it ‘feeds back’ into existing ‘sunk’ investments?

Does Siemens does see a real difference in what they offer; a (rock-solid) platform, significant emphasis on cybersecurity on their platform for a clients security, their growing in-house software applications, digital visualization, and industry-specific machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, but are these parallel or better than “pure” consulting companies? There is a strong case here that Siemens are indicating they are putting their money and reputation out there, through their Mindsphere platform and its expanding services in a statement of trust to clients.

Can they expand back their current Siemens strongholds of applicable Software Application, Digital Services, Products, and Systems as well as their deeper understanding of Lifetime Services into Consulting, Implementation and deeper involvement in Clients Operations? Will they be welcome or not, trusted or regarded in the same way as current service providers. That needs some thinking through in my opinion on differentiation to get themselves in pitching these services against very experienced consultants.

The margins in this area are higher, Siemens is signaling a profit pool of 12-18%.

Q3. IT and OT are converging but this does need a new way of thinking?

For years the view has been that IT and OT were converging. The Corporate IT team battling all their information technology issues versus the OT team working through their operational technology changes. The increasing amount of high-tech going into factories, onto fleets, into cars, or in the use of many highly specialized machines for the technical purpose such as robots where integration is becoming absolute key, can Siemens position itself well in all these areas? It certainly can, it can ‘fuse’ technology solutions for complete business solutions.

The whole context of (your) operational business and industrial activities and assets is where the past division between IT and OT just can’t continue anymore. It is the defacto conversions going on that convergence and integration needs to come together that must force this change, once and for all. Security of “everything” has to be on a common platform as the connections, nodes, and sensors are potentially highly vulnerable without a cohesive plan. Can Siemens help in this as it builds out its Charter of Trust around Cyber Security?

So we are heading for convergence and the depth of knowledge within a specific industry, the way a machine works, communicates and is engineered we do need a new “transformation”. Do companies like Siemens leverage their expertise in physical and digital to fuse It & OT in new ways? The challenges of securing data are huge, it is the elephant in the boardroom.

As they have just purchased a significant App developer and have strategic alliances with others they can build the tools to sit within safe environments (their platform) and analyse data, automate it, simulate it, automate it, apply machine learning and AI and keep helping “write” consistent updates to applications needed at ever-increasing speeds in client’s business areas.

So convergence of IT and OT offers those with more of the (mythical) “full stack” to be a partner of choice. Siemens is seeing this or just well positioned to now go and exploit this in their own specific way. Pure consulting Firms do not have this investment in assets or their own platforms to complete, perhaps?

I did recently put up “A case for changing the IIoT platform providers proposition,” I think Siemens is certainly doing that from what I can draw in inference in this announcement.

Maybe we are moving to a different narrative here. One that takes IoT and the data story into the Smart narrative of real business value. This is a topic I am coming back too as mentioned in a separate post soon.

Q4: Why would Siemens expand at a time when GE contracts in this area?

GE is in an awful state today. The story of IIoT and everyone being a digital player was pioneered and pushed by the previous CEO of GE, Jeff Immelt. He had a very ‘expansive’ mind and pocket for GE to build GE Predix. I gave a view some months ago here in “Digital to the rescue or has the opportunity past for GE? The new leadership at the top of GE has been giving a tighter clarity to a new way forward on Predix.

GE through Predix cut out IIoT as a separate market for dedicated solutions and different business models. It opened the way for platform offerings from many others. Siemens was a very fast follower and built its Mindsphere in a very different way. I think it reduced the rhetoric and focused on validating and proving its credentials in a very different way than GE.  GE and Predix got caught up in a real Silicon Valley expansion type frenzy but it really woke up the market to the potential platforms provide in designing new business models, accelerating technology adoption and software solutions.

Today GE is going through some very tough reorganizations. It is scaling down, selling off a number of assets once regarded as strategic and Predix has been deeply caught in this “downsizing”; in financial backing, expansion, and scope of services. Many of its internal customers are leaving the GE fold, being sold off. What does that mean for Predix? The latest suggestion is that a number of Predix assets are going on the block

We have learned Predix will not so much go out and attract new clients but solely focus on its existing client base. Now that is massive so let’s not get so caught up in that, but it signals “the end of we will take on the world and dominate” as a mindset. The seemingly open-ended financial flow towards Predix has suddenly been (dramatically) reduced. The top management within GE has given the Predix team a clear directive, to focus on giving priority to the internal digitalization of its own parts and tighten up on the “open to all” stance. It formed a strategic alliance with Microsoft and Azure to lessen the financial and digital burden and recently has been caught up in speculations that “certain parts “ of Predix will be auctioned off (see link above).

So why at this very moment when one, GE & Predix seems to be contracting does Siemens and Mindsphere begins to ramp up even further by acquiring and expanding? Of course, one easy answer is the financial shape of the two. Siemens is in the position to expand, GE is not. It could be the difference in CEO’s in where they are in their tenure and vision of the market, it could be how each went about getting to this point of time, seeing things in very different ways to a future. Whatever the case the different position seems significant, the timing perhaps not!

This might be the hard part to chew over and digest a little more and analysts will be dining out on this for months, if not years.

Predix really flew out of the digital blocks but Siemens seems to be more a distance runner. Thoughtful, reflective, clear of its Germanic roots of planning through in more comprehensive ways perhaps might be part of the analysis but the move into a very expansive and potentially expensive IoT offer, of Integration Services needs designing carefully.

There are far too many “wounded animals” out there, who equally joined the platform chase (about 450 on the last count according to IoT Analytics)  and there are some turbulent times in the near future as the markets shake out the weaker from the stronger. And let’s not forget Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and IBM Watson and others, all-seeing digital shifts taking place, working through their new design offerings and making attractive deals in this platform market space. These are the 800-pound gorilla’s in this digital space building their own platforms for business but they totally fail to have the manufacturing “chops” in understanding complex machinery that Siemens really has. Having the Physical and Digital is the “twin” that Siemens does have. Take a read of “Have you got your digital strategy sorted out yet”

Siemens seems not scared of a good hard fight but with stated operating objectives to be made clear by the designated leaders in its digital industries area, this move of expanding its services on top of Mindsphere at a time when others are contracting or hurting is a very watchful one for all involved.

Q 5: Is the existing platform Mindsphere robust enough in client validation and use cases?

There has been a number of research investigations into the IoT and IIoT platform business. Many clients are still holding back. Why is that? Whatever the reasons they need solving. Is its legacy issues, a lack of the right type of digitally-savvy resources, a poor boardroom understanding of technologies ongoing impact, or simply a reluctance to undergo such a digital transformation, in cost and disruption.

Clients still do not seem clear on direction, execution or where to place their bets. They are lacking their own in-house talent and seem to have reluctant stakeholders in any digital transformation. Siemens is facing this growing frustration in their expansion ambitions. There is a whole journey of breaking down barriers.

Are Siemens ready or can become fit to take on these significant challenges? As they shape their offer, their “take” of Integration Services based on where they are and what they can offer, will this help unblock the digital logjam?. Perhaps but they need to open up a lot more on the current state of the business to show their credentials in very different ways.

Siemens need to build a new narrative away from the past one.

A very significant part of Siemens digital business has been and still is PLM related. This has been its major plus point, now there is a need for something as big and different. I certainly believe their Digital Twin is one of those but they need to convince more customers of the value of this “twin” and what it can bring in value, efficiency, predictions, and cost saving in avoidance and prediction.

The place to go, in my opinion, is in “smart”: Smart buildings, smart cities, smart cars, smart trains, smart supply chains, smart manufacturing but in owning a “smart” platform that learns, is full of intelligence and smart apps. Mendix is part of this story.  There is a need to build a “smart” holistic integrated story.

A platform version 2- smart in design, operation, and service. Now that becomes exciting.

As for the client validation and use case. Like many these seem awfully thin in published outcomes, this alone, unless addressed, will hold customers back. That is of course unless the next wave of platform design becomes like a tsunami that many are unable to ignore then it might be different. In becoming “smart” in everything, being “context-aware, in intelligence and being proactive (a core design feature of Mendix)” then platforms, as we know them today possibly, can make a dramatic shift to a new platform 2 design.  Siemens might be able to show a way for the new game to emerge in delivering business value, in “smart” ways, not just data, delivered and supported in highly visual and intelligent ways.

Q6: Siemens has many of the formidable competitors as “partners” in their ecosystem of supplies so how will this work going forward?

I have already partly raised this issue of formidable competitors or partners. I believe platforms will only really thrive when we design them in a more robust ecosystem design. Today there are many versions of what is a “ecosystems” but we have not designed a business ecosystem based on platforms fully, as yet. The whole holistic design of supply and demand are not in true balance. It has been a supply- sided ‘push’ and a client-side “push away”. The reflection on balance, push and pull within the whole system of IIoT needs re-addressing.

Partnerships are the way forward but can you have the platform provider as the chief orchestrator? Yes, you can because the prize is greater than the platform. When the value of the Ecosystem extracting from the platform is greater, you are getting closer to having a better balance and successful transformation towards a new business ecosystem. This is years away and the role of the orchestrator becomes critical to shape and direct this. The orchestrator does not need to win all of the parts, he/she needs to conduct it.

Now will Siemens relinquish parts within the value of IIoT or does it need too yet? The market is still forming

I think it becomes a judgment of how long the maturity path we are in digitalization of IIoT and we might be past the “early adopters”- the visionaries and moving now into the vast majority of adopters of platform business models.

Yet there are a huge number of late majority and laggards still to embrace a true digital transformation. As we seem to be at one of those “crossing the chasm” points the ability to collaborate, partner and build out a reciprocating network is where the future value and growth lies. Will Siemens embrace a different model of ownership and partnership to capture the bigger part of the IIoT market in the future? Time and strategic discussions going on will determine this for the emerging future.

I have been discussing this need to change the Platform Business Model on a number of occasions, recently in this piece “Platform Providers need to think more about Ecosystem Principles and Design”

In summary

So the announcement of Siemens expanding its IoT platform offering into Integration Services to support the digital transformation journey of its customers is a potentially bold and ambitious move. It is a fast-growing and attractive market to enter but if they, Siemens, can answer these six questions (and a few more besides) in market-defining terms then I think it has the offering of a “transformation” strategic move.

The next six months as they design this out will be pivotal in knowing if they are addressing these questions and more.

The post Biting off more than we can chew can be a good thing……depending. first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

The post Opening up our thinking towards ecosystems has a powerful effect first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

I believe we are at an inflection point where the design of IIoT platforms needs to be integrated into a new way of Ecosystem Design.

There is a real need for a more shared value, breaking through the old traditional boundaries of single companies working with ‘selected’ providers of service and highly selective platform providers.

Ecosystem design is about being open in all potentially valuable proposals and co-creation possibilities. It is using multiple platforms as being part of a very different future design. You go where the best collaborations can take place not get .locked into one.

We need to stop and start to think about Ecosystems and their design for platform providers. Platforms have been amazing in their design, recognition, and value in a very short time.

Platforms are changing the way we undertake business. We have passed through the early phase of their design. It is now time to bring platforms into their place within a greater Ecosystem design.

Firstly you can read the opening post on this here

We need to evolve our present IIoT platform position. Otherwise, we see a possible scenario like the one shown below, unless there is not this recognition of change. A change from the IIoT partner attempting to dominate whereas it needs a balanced approach for greater collaboration and co-creation. It moves from one-with-one to many-to-many, through a specific platform hosted by the right IIoT platform provider.

My view of where we need to go:

Establishing an ecosystem of design allows a network of cross-industry players to work together through their chosen common platforms.

It is the depth and breadth of the collaboration undertaken between the participants that can deliver a different value proposition to new consumer solutions, or extend necessary capabilities through the cooperations and discoveries that make together.

To achieve this a technology platform is provided to facilitate this. It is suggested no single player needs to dominate, or needs to own or operate all components of the solution. The value of this ecosystem generates solutions that when the combined parties collaborate, each of the parties involved, gains greater value beyond operating as a single entity.

Today’s platform providers I believe are missing this point. They want to offer their solutions, manage others data and their activities on their platform, they want to be the dominating player. I believe this will not work long-term.

The focus must be on the longer-term for multiple reasons

There needs to be a long-term solution of a very different value proposition and growth equation. It is the design of the ecosystem for all to extract value in greater opportunities for collaboration.

Today’s offerings are very solution specific to each separate player. At present each platform provider is wrestling with taking from one and not providing the place or value proposition for collaborative sharing across a broader network. It is how all are participating and extracting multiple value points, holds the key to real sustaining differentiation.

I sit back and listen to all the very impressive partners on the supply side. These are a roll call of all the technology building companies like Amazon, Microsoft, SAP as well as all the Consultants (Deloitte, Accenture, PwC etc) all jostling in this space to carve out their piece or extract their revenue piece from clients.

Platforms are moving from being a radical design into being incremental. The distinctive parts are more a growing lead and lag, catching up or sneaking out a led, as different platforms providers catch up or find the next short-term competitive edge to nudge ahead.

Is this where platforms are going, becoming commodity trading platforms?

Yet the game will be won or lost on the clients demand side. and this needs a fundamental shift in thinking.

This demand-side (clients) seems reluctant to jump on mass. That is partly because they (each client) see themselves as different in their issues and needs.

There are constant ‘wins’ occurring as one platform provider beats another, to host that clients’ data and offer solutions for their data needs but it is so much more than this. This is presently a war of attrition, one client, then another,then move on. This is gaining ground at a high cost in investment, in channelling resources to achieve this.

Of course, one client’s need is very different to another, to get the platform ready and integrated into each operation is tough work in evaluations, in testing, in convincing, in connecting them up into the platform, to gain a return on resources.

Each customer needs to build a valid business investment case to convince the board to make the investments but it needs to be positioned as a far more future casting understanding of where the shift will head towards.

One of the greater collaborations, is co-creation with multiple partners where a platform approach becomes essential.

Technology adoption is hard, hard work just to complete the analysis of best choice.

There is this promise of new sources of revenue, rationalizing cost structure and gaining value from this connecting up to be considered and offered as validation to the board to allocate funds and make strategic investments.

Although it is claimed that there is ease in connecting into a platform, that is rather overhyped compared to the reality. When all sides sit down and begin to see the cost implications, the realities and the time it will take to get those returns, so easily spoken off by many, platform business validation still is a combination of a hard sell across organizations, still grappling with basic technology adoption.

There is a host of considerations. such as trustworthiness and reliability of the platform vendor, the security needs, and compatibility, what data resides where, the future development of solutions, of the platforms, of API’s that, actually work in a specific environment.

Then you have scaling, adding machines, locations, overcoming legacies, how edge solutions will work in the real world of that specific client. No technology adoption through platforms is hard work.

Making choices are even harder. Do you chose Microsoft’s Azure, AWS IoT, IBM Watson, SAP Leonardo, PTC, etc., or do you go with specific manufacturers offering their “specialized” solutions?

The likes of GE Predix, Siemens Mindsphere, Schneiders EcoStruxure, Bosch IoT Suite. You literally have hundreds, I mean hundreds of permutations to evaluate, no wonder the “hype” gets often to a fever pitch in sales pitches.

Then you as a CTO are required to gaze into a crystal ball on speed, on the rate of change, the levels of technology change occurring, and all the different tools that need to be considered to bring out improved performance.

Do you build data centers or rely on third partners? How do you evaluate your Intellectual Property, what needs to stay resident, what can go up into a cloud? You need to convince a majority of board members who remain highly skeptical of this level of change, who keep asking for what level of real return?

I have seen it is suggested it will take about eight years to complete the transformation to a digital organization. One where any implementation, is to progressively invest, learn and then realize the potential of digital transformation.

How returns are calculated on the investments made needs to be broken down, to gain constant validation along the way. That does seem a very long time but perhaps is realistic.

If this is the case then platform providers need to change their point of value.

Also, it still seems so many organizations do not even have a robust IT investment plan in place today, just space and approval enough to experiment, pilot. and learn. Many manufacturers lack a bold strategy within their IT solutions. IIoT Platform providers are running well ahead of the current adoption curve.

A shift in the value proposition given to a client might need to change to adjust to this slow adoption curve. It might require a far more highly collaborative and imaginative set of solutions, beyond today’s offerings.

We need a clear story that relates to the clients need as the first step.

I am tired of listening to the claims that behind every platform (or we hope) is a dynamic web of technology-based partners who will handle everything. It seems it is not convincing the majority of non-adopters.

We know platforms are the way to go (so far in current wisdom) as platform-based business models we are told will be core to the future business strategy.

How we overcome legacy systems and accelerate a new architecture on a scale and momentum requires much beyond the current rhetoric of Industry 4.0. So what is that story?

We need a focus on the client need not the IIoT platform providers need.

So my view of the three stages of IIoT platforms that we will be going through.

We are close to the first trigging point of disruption around IIot platform and what needs to move into the next phase of exploring and changing the value proposition

I would content it is to refocus away from the platform message onto the ecosystem one. Now the word “ecosystem” comes in multiple flavors and understanding. One part of our new story needs to define and structure a ‘real’ ecosystem that manages creation, evolution, and destruction.

Ecosystems are not today’s story of partners that ‘simply’ sell, deliver and service the offering’. It is mobilizing, creating, designing an ecosystem that is built on an open, shared value model.

First, you consider a framework of value co-creation.

I am a real admirer of Chris Lawer and his work on Ecosystem Value Design at Umio. He focuses specifically on the health industry but I know his work has a wider application, that is what is holding my interest.

I keep as up to date on this as it is an essential part of knowing the new approach to building lasting and healthy ecosystems. It is part of the new story we need to shift towards.

Ecosystems are full of adoption or adaption, rapid growth, growing maturity and then this inevitable decline. It is how we build the new story around collaboration, knowledge exchange and networks.

Each of these needs a new design or recognition that without these three we can’t change and re-equip ourselves to take digital advantage.

The new story needs to start here in recognizing open collaboration, knowledge exchanges, and networks, are our base. It is technology then needs to sit on top of these, as do many other enablers to facilitate this. We are designing presently around technology fit, not the client, or ecosystem fit.

We need to change what is offered. This requires a new promise of value, growth, partnerships, and ability to deal with growing complexity in a highly secure and networked environment. The current messages are wrongly placed I feel. They focus on the IIoT provider, not the client and their increasing need of being in a network for co-creation and new growth paths.

We need to go back to the roots of Ecosystem understanding

The present use of the word “ecosystem” has been born or borrowed (for industrial use) from ecology but it is not appreciating the understanding as well as it should do.

We in industry do need to understand this, embrace it and interpret it in this ecological way, or design the Eco-friendly intent in a clear, game-changing way, that allows us to move forward at higher increased rates of change.

To do this we do need new patterns of thinking, in our behaviors and the way we undertake business. New mental models are notoriously hard to adopt. Trust becomes central but this can be a different level of trust, built increasing on AI and a growing Charter of Trust.

I actually listened to a fledgling Charter of Trust while at Siemens but it is being built ‘just’ for dealing with Cybersecurity. Again technology-led not Ecologically-led. Perhaps it can evolve up as well as down? That is for another post perhaps.

So at this point in time, I believe IIoT platform providers have to change their business model

So I content IIoT platform providers need to shift from their own positioning of controlling and owning platforms and their solutions. They should become increasingly open and work towards a greater ecosystem design.

Do I have a clearer picture of what is an Ecosystem design? It is emerging and needs a flushing out, a depth of exploring and validation. I believe the current IIoT platform providers value proposition is wrong, pure and simple, based on their needs.

I propose we need to urgently go to the next stage of the evolution design to accelerate adoption and move towards a greater ability to co-create, collaborate and network and the platform becomes essential for that to occur, within ‘given’ spaces.

The post Platform Providers need to think more about Ecosystems Principles and Design first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

Let me offer up an initial case of why there is a need for a change in where we are on IIoT platforms and their current emphasis and focus on how we need to change the value equation out in the future in our solution designs and positioning of platforms, as a need to achieve. This is based on considering a greater ecosystem perspective, one that provides a sizable move towards a digital transformation we need to make.

Here I attempt to lay out the current position and suggest there is a case for change. The IIoT platform provider needs to change their value proposition urgently, in my opinion, or move along a faster evolutionary curve certainly, to get clients seeing their own value-add endgame, not just the IIoT providers race for dominating the platform space.

So let’s look at where IIoT platforms currently are, and in my related post where we might consider some changes in how we are evolving the platform story.

So part one is below, part two is a click away, available as a follow-on to this post ( a doubleheader read)

Last week I was fortunate enough to be in one of those up close and personal sessions, having further exposure to one of the leading IoT platform providers in the industrial space, Siemens Mindsphere. This got me thinking even more of where we are in this current platform race. I partly use them to illustrate the great progress but also the case for change.

I heard a very impressive story of the technology building and connecting-up going on within this Mindsphere platform. The growing funneling of Siemens solutions onto this platform is gaining real momentum. They do seem to have significant growth and achievements in attracting new customers. I had the feeling that the use cases they continue to build were, as I call it, more proofing validation in further convincing others, one prospect at a time. So you get this impression it is a struggle to get scaling to the levels you really need. Something needs to change.

I missed the “wow” moment that adoption was moving to another significant level, but I might be wrong here. A few days later, Siemens made an announcement of partnering up with Alibaba Cloud for IIoT in China. This continues building the supply side and will be fairly significant, but it is another side of a platform story that perhaps is still not compelling enough. The demand side is where it becomes compelling for clients signing on as they see it is increasingly in their real interests, more than ‘just’ a new technology layer within the value proposition; it offers a real network of collaborators and co-creation. We are not at this point within most IIoT platforms today. We need to get there.

As an observation, firstly listening and then researching, I do feel Mindsphere still lags on its API’s compared to others. It still is perhaps more internally driven in its outcome focus than it should be; it is driving clients to Siemens solutions, understandable but actually limited. Making the platform more open would add significantly.

The building of their technology stack keeps pace or is nudging ahead of competitors in some places, but this advantage erodes fairly quickly as it seems others simply race to catch up or claims to have that piece equally covered off.

The hype with the marketing runs ahead of the reality; it seems for many. 

I am not convinced they are telling the individual platform providers story, where they are a compelling proposition; they are in the crowd touting technology blurring any differentiation. Even the digital twin a real value-add for Siemens and Mindsphere it is drowned out by a mix of marketing messages.

I also wonder about the robustness of the device management being offered to determine how these can manage multiple issues of legacy, individual IT design etc. Legacy is the really big elephant in any clients room. This seems to be not well addressed by most IIoT platform providers- why?

Finally, it strikes me part of the reason why we are not yet at a stage of rapid adoption, is we lack having industrial standards relating to platforms, to protocols etc so this alone restricts adoption and also is not providing the “goal posts” to unite each manufacturer to drive towards.

One place where we do have a move to clear standards is in Industry 4.0 and somehow most platform providers need to align themselves far more with that story. Bosch is the notable exception, they have a far more ‘holistic’ view of how they are approaching platforms, clients and industry 4.0. Others could learn from them

All of these issues are not just for Mindsphere but for all nearly other IIoT platform providers, holds adoption back for many I am sure.

Platforms are a digital jigsaw puzzle but they need to be far more.

Of course, building platforms is a little like building a puzzle, where each platform provider is constantly addressing many individual gaps, be these geographical, by industry, by the maturity of need and solution, by the individual client. You sense the energy, the commitment, and momentum but you wonder over the channeling of this, it seems still down in the trenches, client by client, case by case, technology-driven but is these “return proven?” Can that approach be sustained? Are there better solutions? We need to think about the “adoption curve” differently. We need to change the story.

I believe many prospective clients are sitting on the fence and simply not yet prepared to make lasting commitments to one platform solution over another. Something soon has to break. We still see these “walled gardens” claiming to be open, offered by IIoT platform providers but what actually is “open” is highly debatable.

Platform providers are in this chase for providing solutions that position themselves as better than others. Are they? That is the wrong race, it is the client’s needs that are central. With platform providers chasing each other with this heavy technology focus,  the level of differentiation gets negated and it leaves clients back at square one- confused and reluctant to commit.

I sense there is this danger of seeing the lemmings effect, simply following or chasing each other, based on this so ‘intent’ technology focus, with the risk that many platform providers, will just simply go over a digital cliff. I’ll come back to that in another post but just picture this if things around platforms do not change.

You get the impression they are all racing to the same point, chasing technology nirvana. As they race ‘together’ they need to watch out for the eventual cliff as many will simply go over!  Are they focusing on the right race?

I thank there needs to be a change. I will attempt to outline a different way in this post and the follow one- pointing to moving the emphasis to an Ecosystem design where platforms “simply” sit in the middle so all get greater shared value than today’s business proposition.

We need to stop for a moment and lift ourselves out of the trenches and see the blue sky.

What we offer today needs a change in emphasis, of thinking out the evolution of platforms.

I really think we are one of those ‘magic’ inflection points where the platform provides (and there are many, 450 and still counting) have a real need to shift their story. As platforms stand today, they are all chasing each other, quickly offsetting one platforms advantage over another. It is a very fractured market where the main emphasis is on extending platform through constant technology evolution. Platform providers are moving far to fast and are leaving the majority of the clients watching from the sidelines. Today we are only at the Horizon One stage, building platforms that are platform owner-centric.

Shifting the narrative is required

We are under no disillusion, platform building is hard, expensive and challenging work to keep pace, to create your new selling points that are ongoing and emerging to built even further onto a proposition of integrating new technology that is complex and increasingly necessary with existing systems and designs, all individually evolved on past investments.

Yet today, platform providers are simply just keeping pace with others. Differentiation is being hyped but often not believed as it seems transitory.  Trust is a growing concern, not just ‘a given’ by clients. With the present emphasis on the technology within platforms and with everyone claiming their solutions are the right ones, hyping their own technology solutions we are in a race to nowhere. There is a better way.

So where does this leave the plethora of platform providers? 

They will require very deep pockets if they can’t change and convince the manufacturers, many of their own existing clients, to get a real move on. Significant investments are being made, platform building does not come cheap. One senses that we are getting closer to a significant shaking out of platform solution providers.

Something fundamental does need to change if the adoption does not reach a greater mass and the platform vendor market does not rapidly consolidate. It is far too fragmented today.

Today’s narrative is tired, it needs shifting.

Nearly all manufacturers know they need to change, to become more digitally connected up but in my view, we need to change the story and bring the compelling case closer to their needs.

It simply is not good enough to blandly state we have a cloud-based, open (?) IoT operating system ( so who defines open) that can deliver on a wide range of devices and connectivity options, coupled with robust applications (well universal ones, mostly at present), advanced analytics (if clients can actually handle this to extract value) and closed-loop innovation( whatever that really means) and provide a ‘cherry-pick’ of API’s and device solutions

So I would argue that we need to change our story.

We need to shift our platform rhetoric into a vastly different one, one based on building the Ecosystem story, well defined in its understanding that needs a very intense focus on what it means within Industry design and expected outcomes.

The key message from my reflecting is “we do need to change our story, it is simply not about platforms“. It is thinking for the design for ecosystems, as put recently as “ecosystem mobilization” It is not going to be easy but if we do not change the story from platforms to ecosystem then we will see this lemming prediction happen.

We will be moving fast through the design of creation, evolution, and destruction if we do not change the current narrative, fixated on platform solutions and domination. We need to build the greater story around ecosystem design for the industrial world, that changes the current dynamics of the race within platform providers. It separates the value proposition that builds a more equitable co-creation environment.

***Please read on in the follow-on post, the link is here.

The post The case for changing the IIoT platform providers value proposition 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/

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