Digital Enterprises

Great Apps will deliver the future business value in IIoT

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Technology is radically altering our need for innovation. We see increasingly innovation is feeding off the “digital response rate” and how we build and design the application software will transform IIoT as it has for our personal world (B2C), where we download apps on a daily basis to solve a problem or to improve our understanding.

So what is an app? An app is a modern term for a software application, and it is most often used in reference to a mobile app or a small piece of software that runs on a website. It has made significant inroads into B2C offerings, less so on B2B.  It’s typically used to describe anything that isn’t a full-fledged software program, but even that line has become blurred by those developing this apps become more creative and ta into value points for specific application. Typically apps sit on a platform and we download them or simply access them.

The capabilities of these apps vary greatly today, but some companies have started to push the boundaries of what these apps can do, turning the devices into fully functional work tools. Mobile-device management software will explode within the IIoT space. As we grow more enterprise networks the market for smart devices and/or embedded intelligence production processes will see an increase in growth. Apps will allow for a greater building out of our diagnostic needs as well as enable smart nodes. They will assist to combine experience-based knowledge with contextual automation device data and solve problems quicker as a team or send this specific data for analysis and response.

Connecting technology and innovation is altering how we should re-access organizations ability to build out. We are in the middle of a technological-led industrial revolution It is becoming highly dynamic. Apps are a critical part of the building block.

Using an app with new innovations and approaches can provide new functions by tapping into the local power of devices where tablets and smartphone operate as mini-supercomputers on site that is full of sensors, and designing specific apps to explore capabilities and rapidly “feedback” data that has potential value, often called “event management” or experience understanding.

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A Statement of Ecosystem Intent Inside Our Business Enterprise- the CEO letter currently missing

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Ecosystems have become a really hot topic. As we gain the understanding of what a dual strategy approach to what our business could look like, you need to recognize what you still need control of, those you call your core assets. Yet at the same time, to explore and expand out more today we need to build better external collaborative approaches.

To achieve this reaching out and collaborating will require participating in platforms and building up your Ecosystem Management understanding.

The word “Ecosystem” is getting as much “air time” as the general use of the word “innovation” in business recently. It generates buzz, it projects the impression you are looking to the future, managing your business in that progressive, outward way, that shareholders and your employees love to here.

Well as we well only well know with innovation, if it does not align to strategy, integrate within the business activities, it stays a little out on one side. Also, innovation stays so often a necessity to “call upon” but not as your core focus of activity. That focus still is, sadly today focused on managing the assets for short-term performance, where the consistent focus is always on efficiency and effectiveness to “work or sweat those assets”. Maybe we might be seeing a change in ecosystem management design. More of the “assets” outsourced or in collaborative partnerships.

Well, Ecosystems are entering the lexicon of top management. It does sound good to talk about “building our ecosystem” in every possible way. You need to ask though, has management actually sat down and defined the type of ecosystem it wants to design, to participate in, or become part of. Or do this simply happen, a sort of drifting into, a grand experiment, as if that made real progressive sense? Let’s take a different approach

What if the CEO and the board decided to open up the discussion around the future pathway, one of managing within a federation of ecosystems.

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The increasing pace of the IIoT world- don’t hold your breath.

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You certainly have to make choices in life in where you focus your energy, otherwise, it gets way to complicated. For me to learn about Ecosystems and Platforms I have chosen a “select” group of IIoT players or advisors in their field to concentrate upon. Increasingly the insights and leading knowledge seems to be less coming out of the Big Consulting firms but more from those actually operating in the Industrial world (IIoT players).

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.

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Biting off more than we can chew can be a good thing……depending.

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I had mentioned in a related post on my other posting site that I wanted to understand a recent Siemens event.

This was partly presenting 3rd 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 2nd 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.

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Opening up our thinking towards ecosystems has a powerful effect

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ecosystems-abstract

Our whole understanding of innovation is changing, it is opening up to ecosystems and the necessary thinking and designing; there are numerous shifts occurring.

We are evaluating and changing our existing focus from closed (internal orientation) into ones that are having a far more open stance. We are searching for more collaborative innovation (external orientation) combining external partners into more ‘collective thinking’.

This shift is offering us extra acceleration that is needed to improve our innovation performances from concept to market delivery.

Collaborative innovation is also leading us to higher chances of achieving greater impact and success, as nearly all novel ideas lay outside the organization’s domain of understanding.

As we increasingly include the customer and their needs within our understanding, these multiple collaborations and dialogues are building this better internal understanding.

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Platform Providers need to think more about Ecosystems Principles and Design

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In my opening post (here) I was thinking where platform providers seem to be, in their current value proposition. I cannot see their approaches as sustaining. Now, this is a personal opinion and observation but let me lay out an alternative view.

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.

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The case for changing the IIoT platform providers value proposition

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I have been reflecting recently on where we are in all the efforts, focus, and resources, that have been going into the building of our IIoT platforms. This has mainly been around the questioning of where they should fit within the needs of an ecosystem, the end outcome of our new industrial design, in my opinion, that enables digital transformation.

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.

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Being Reminded We Are In A Zero Distance World

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Visual taken from the paper “The Zero Distance World” through Ericsson.

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.

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The dynamics within platform business models

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Market dynamics have changed dramatically in the past few years. The concept of connected networks has been having an increasing impact on all industries and market sectors.

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.

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Have you got your digital twin strategy sorted out yet?

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Gosh, where do you start on thinking through “digital twins”. The manufacturing industry is exploding with their digital twins to mimic their physical operations,

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.

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