Easier access to data is changing everything

Back in 2014 Atlassian’s Scott Farquhar warned; You’re either becoming a software company, or being disrupted by one. In 2015, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella said; Every business should be looking at how it can be transformed through data. At this year's William Buck - CFO symposium, Anthony Stevens, author of Chasing Digital said; Every business needs to be a software business or become disrupted by a business that has.

Scott, Satya and Anthony are not suggesting that your business needs to transition out of what you're currently doing, but instead they are saying that what ever you're doing, it needs to use and leverage the power of software like never before. They're saying businesses need to move beyond using software for mundane and routine activities like email, spreadsheet, documents, calendars, computer aided design, project management and the like. They are saying businesses need to compliment their products and services with software to further enrich the value of their products and or services.

Airbnb, Uber, PayPal, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, etc.... are examples of the changing nature of business. Whilst the world still and always will revolve around physical things, more of these things are being made more beneficial and more valuable with the assistance of software.

The problems that impeded the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) are now all mostly resolved. The problems that remain are in no way impediments and will be resolved while simultaneously, quality and capabilities of IoT solutions will improve and refine. The progress of IoT has been as astounding as the overall advances in the tech sector.

One of the new frontiers is the Digital Twin. It's essentially a clever melding of the capabilities of IoT and computational simulations. This has eventuated because building IoT solutions has become easier and the results from computational simulations is now produced in next to no time. The IoT is making it possible to create a digital twin that combines real-time data about a physical product's operation into a computational simulation tool. Simulating digital twins with real-time data streams provides advanced intelligence and insight into a product’s behaviours. Essentially, its using present operating data with product design information to predict what will happen to the product in the future. Businesses are looking to digital twins to disrupt their industries by drastically lowering their operating and maintenance costs and by marketing their products as optimized services in real time. This is another example of monetising data.

The following videos illustrates some use cases.

RoI's is as usual the driving force, so please feel to free to reach out for a discussion about how your business can compliment its products and service with the power of the Internet of Things, Augmented Reality, Advanced Analytics and Digital Twins.

PTC, a leading IoT Platform developer, is a enabling businesses in creating Digital Twin solutions faster and in a more affordable manner than ever before. They are also pioneering new ways for businesses to use data to improve productivity and gain even more value. One such way is by closing the data loop and feeding accurate (real-time) data to service technicians and production personnel so that they can interact more productively with the physical world. The enabling tool in this case is Augmented Reality (AR).

A great example of this is BAE Systems' use of the Hololens which provides guided assembly instructions to production personnel.

Special thanks to PTC, Ansys, LEAP & KTM.