platform management

Collective intelligence for a thriving and enabling ecosystem

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I have been thinking more about “Collective Intelligence” recently, so as to build more thriving and enabling ecosystems. I would argue we do need to change the way we work, engage and participate in sharing what we know with others and then find the connecting mechanisms, to build from this collective engagement.

The future of work needs to be managed so differently than today’s designs. Although AI takes today’s headlines it is the collective use of human intelligence that will radically alter the way we eventually work.

Let me give you a little background first on what is triggering this.

For the past year, I have been privileged to be part of an external influencer community, centered on Siemens. Presently we have sixteen external influencers coming together about every three months with a range of Siemens people, internal experts in Cyber Security, Smart cities, digital transformation, communications, Artificial Intelligence and increasingly becoming engaged in conversations with Senior Management and Board members.

We are only scratching the surface of a very big organization but do have very exciting possibilities, if we continue to connect and are seen as valuable and worthwhile in exploring different ways of working and communicating. We do have the real potential to influence if this group becomes more embedded in aspects that can shape thinking.

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Are You Struggling with Technology Evolution and New Designs?

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I have been struggling with a fair amount on a repositioning within my business offering. I think firstly, that innovation has become digital innovation and that is one space I need to keep going towards. Not only in understanding all of the implications of this shift but in my own capability building, to deliver more support to this significant change we are undergoing, through so much technology connecting up all of the innovation “pieces,” from insight triggering, to final delivery of the finished design.

The other focus area is continuing to extend out my approach and understanding of the growing importance of platforms and ecosystems within a business. They form the future approach to build a thriving and sustainable business.

My questions recently have been where is my fit in this thinking or supporting platforms and ecosystems, beyond what I am presently doing?

The visual shown above is attempting to frame this for me. There are four critical aspects of platforms and ecosystems that need to be shaped. Let me explain:

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Facing the future- the galactic war of IIoT platforms moves into its next phase

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So Hannover Messe 19 (#HM19) is behind us. The pavilions are being pulled down, some stored away for use next year.

The buzz, excitement and the sheer energy and effort, that thousands put into their role as part of this event, is amazing. The exhibitor, like the committed visitor, ends up exhausted, even ‘spent’ but was it worth it?

The “housing” under HM19 of so many competing forces within Industry all vying for attention is overwhelming. It reminds you of how competitive and confusing all of this transformation stuff is. So conflicting actually.

The memories can be fleeting or they can be lasting. In the end, they nudge us all nearer to decisions, these sort of events help us to become more informed. what we lack is a better way of containing all we have learned so we can filter it, sort it and relate the multiple messages to our own needs. Not easy but “do-able” in better ways than we have today. The “return on investment” gets better if we can make connections into “connected stories” I have some thoughts on these but that is for another time. Let’s get into this piece.

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Digital transformation is our place of purgatory today.

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We are caught in a moment of time. All the hype, push, the argument for making the “digital transformation” is so badly stalled in many of our Corporations. We are running a marathon, mostly it seems fueled by “spent” energy and a growing sense of lowering our belief and confidence that we can finish this.

These digital transformations are like the deer, suddenly caught in the headlamp of a car that simply freezes, they seem immobilized, even for brief seconds, sometimes its reaction to flee is too late, it gets caught out by the oncoming car.

I feel many of our entities are caught in this moment of fear, bewilderment, rather paralyzed in how to tackle digital transformation. It is overwhelming. The advice available often does not help, it compounds that fear, they seem to be just staring at the size of the problem.

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Entering the Fray Differently in Industrial IoT Platform Solutions

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We have ABB forming a JV with Dassault Systems. We have Rockwell firstly linking up with PTC and now a Rockwell and Schlumberger tie up. They will significantly make a difference in the complexity of those offering  Industrial IoT platform solutions.

What do these strategic moves mean to the IIoT market and to potential clients?

In some way, they indicate levels of consolidation, the realism of how to compete, and catch up with the bigger IIoT Platform investors today, that have been pushing and pioneering the IIoT market.

The two, GE with its Predix IIoT platform and Siemens and its Mindsphere one, are equally facing a certain crossroad in future decisions. I’ll outline later in this article or have raised questions previously in past posts. The impact of these competitors joining the fray is certainly announcing this market is getting highly competitive.

What will be future decisions for others offering more niche platform solutions as well, such as Bosch and Schneider Electric? More is yet to come but when you begin to see multiple announcements in acquisitions, partnerships, and JV’s, then you know the market is entering its next phase of growth – that crossing the chasm, one that is entering a very competitive positioning to grab market share and client wins. Investment decisions are perhaps about to get even bigger or solution sets more “imaginative” to attract clients into making their commitments.

Firstly, a short snapshot of the recent Partnership announcements

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The Ability to Scale and Collaborate in Platform Thinking.

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Credit Tatiana Plakhova @ complexitygraphics.co

For no specific reason, I went a little quiet on my posts on this site recently. There was not one reason, it felt that February just slipped by.

Actually, I can partly explain it as it was partly caught up in a project that took more time than I expected.

Also partly caught up in a lot of mixed feelings that held me back, so I got a little blocked in my thinking. You do have moments like that but you eventually work through them and “something” unblocks and things start to flow again.

Suddenly in the first few days of March, like Spring arriving, it was a very different burst of energy, well actually more insights, that have kicked off my month well.

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Are PTC and Rockwell Automation Delivering the Connected Enterprise?

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

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

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

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

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

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The IIoT digital solution platform market- late 2018 round-up of my observations.

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Do you know your platform solution?

Knowing your digital solutions is key to choose industrial platforms, as they might not meet your exact needs

What is under the hood of an Industrial Platform solution? What do you look for?

IIoT Platforms are still under significant construction

How do you judge the platforms that are out there?

Companies have this essential need to build an IoT platform today, or be at least very active partner in one, or even many, to fit their business goals. A platform connects, it connects your world with the rest of the world. Often when we talk about IIoT, it can get easily confused with IoT. Actually, IIoT, grew out of the other, IOT.

IoT is mostly about making the human interaction with the object(ives). IIoT is about connecting devices, sensors, building and improving manufacturing execution systems then applying intelligence and analytics to understand or improve the performance of the existing devices. The aim is to monitor, build parameters, sophisticated controls and search for solutions that will lessen the downtime and improve the productivity of the asset.

McKinsey estimates that the Industrial Internet of Things will create $7.5T in added-value by 2025. IIoT has been valued at around $255b as a market in 2025 (a past GE estimate). These two seem to offer very different estimates. In many ways, we are all confused and still guessing or predicting, because of so much uncertainty and not honestly knowing what comes next in technology invention that changes the position. We have learned, in our engagement and growing reliance just on the smartphone.

We have all learned to adapt and adopt so differently, as we connect more and more. In the IIoT world, there is predicted value across all of the connections (McKinsey view)  and as we see more solutions emerging, as ways to serve that “connected” need market growth will more than likely simply accelerate away. Speed, scale, scope are all accelerating away, and as companies, we need to find our positioning in this evolution and industrial internet. The 4th Industrial revolution is well-under way.

Let me provide a snapshot, my view, of where IIoT platforms-as-a-service sit today.

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The confusing world of IIoT platforms needs to change in 2019

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I feel 2019 will be a make or break year for the platform providers for IIoT solutions. We are getting a real sense of clarity on who is leading the pack, who is struggling to keep up and some becoming real laggards, that need to change their game dramatically to stay in the platform hunt.

Clients need to come off their fence in where to invest and make some defining I(I)oT decisions. Yet to allow this to take place we need a far greater clarity of the value and real positioning of the platform providers. We need to extract the real business value understanding and ditch all the “hype” that is drowning out the real understanding. Ditch the noise, increase the signal

When you look at this top fifteen provides you can break them out between those coming from the industrial solution providers (Siemens, Schneider Electric, Bosch, GE Digital, Hitachi) and those coming from a technology conglomerate positioning  (AWS, Microsoft) those that are well known for specialised offering in technology solutions (IBM, SAP, Oracle, Cisco, Atos) and those that give perhaps greater specialised IoT focus in their business model (Software AG, PTC,C3 IoT)

How do you choose between these for your own solutions?

One thing enterprises struggling with is who to go with, that committing too, longer-term. Let us not forget, it is not one, it is a selection of those platform providers that when combined will offer you solutions to a significant part of your solution need. Partly, the decisions considers does depend on which industry you are in, the type of solutions you are looking towards to solve, so as resolve your biggest problems in your digital transformation. Also, you have to consider the technology providers you have built a history with, often equally caught up in legacy issues, or those you determine will be best at managing your cloud and edge issues (management, storage, analysis, remote connections) going forward.

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Wrapping yourself around IoT software stacks. Not easy to digest.

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Software stacks. This conquers up a certain mystery for me, so I decided to order up a plate to see if I can digest all they seem to be offering.

I am constantly reading about “stacks” when it comes to technology design. The IoT stack is becoming the “Thing Stack”. Really? Need to understand that.

Technology has layers that constantly are adding (stacks) of complexity. Each layer needs to be designed to integrate and communicate with the other layers in the stack.

So far so good for a layman like me but lets now dig in.

It is when we get to the open question of “what is a full stack” it gets more complicated.

This possibly means how much can you eat (consume), how hungry you are or how complicated your business is to determine the needs of a “full stack. Hence why I went for my pancake stack as you are always asked: “how big a stack do you want?”

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