I am excited about the state of Industrial Transformation and Industry 4.0!
We have come quite a way over the past few years – not just in technology but crucially in how we approach and leverage it in an industrial context.
When I first talked to manufacturers of heavy machinery about preventive maintenance around 6 years back, there was a lot of pushback. In particular, manufacturers were concerned that their customers would not want to have a “connected machine” on their shop floors, not so much for security concerns but for the ability to convey a detailed view of how a machine was used. There was a concern that, for example, the usage patterns of CNC machines in Automotive and Aerospace might be giving away secrets of the trade and production.
A few years back, I met with the newly appointed CIO of a global manufacturing company’s China operations – he conveyed that his predecessor was barred from entering their manufacturing plant, essentially being banned from the shop floor. This extreme divide between operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) didn’t seem to bode well for digital transformation in manufacturing.
Fast forward to today: walking the floors at the ITAP Singapore, the first thought that struck me – how far have we come! Preventive maintenance was everywhere, from software companies such as SAP, engineering heavyweights such as Siemens and ABB, consulting services companies such as Accenture. In fact, the solutions presented and the way they were presented was following a similar pattern – you couldn’t outright say whether you are at an engineering company’s booth, or a software company or a consulting firm! That says a lot on how the approach has changed and how fast the IT/OT barrier is eroding.
And new business models are emerging too: for example, ABB presented their “Reliability-as-a-Service” offering, part of their Digital Powertrain solutions, which allows customers to subscribe to the provisioning of, say a motor or water pump, by paying a monthly fee, with a guaranteed uptime enabled by predictive maintenance – the IaaS cloud story, now for industrial equipment.
Hitachi Vantara talked about their Source-Edge-to-Cloud-Insights framework, which bridges IT and OT, edge and cloud, monitoring and prediction; and Accenture pushed the envelope of what you would consider IoT by leveraging a virtual product rendering engine to build training and support virtual models of machinery for engineers and service personnel. Oh, and it’s by the same team that did the Games of Thrones CGI!
We live in exciting times for IoT and Industrial Transformation
What makes the IoT space so interesting for me is the fact that players from very different background: engineering companies, software providers, cloud hyper-scalers, device makers, consultancy and service providers. All are a now in the industrial transformation game, and in my view no player – or team – has yet emerged to dominate the market in end-to-end IoT solutions.
I am delighted to spending a large amount of my research in this area over the following months, starting with a market overview of consultancies and service providers for IoT solutions in the APAC region – stay tuned for the publishing of Forrester NowTech – IoT consultancies and service providers in APAC, Q4 2019.