Data is the new gold of the digital era. With IoT rapidly gaining grounds in industrial settings, data generated by smart devices and machines offer a gold mine of information that businesses can utilize to enhance their efficiency and stimulate growth. While industrial IoT (IIoT) technologies help businesses to collect data like never before, when it comes to putting that data to use, most are at a loss. Understanding how to leverage data is thus critical for companies to devise solutions that best match their business goals, requiring the assistance of capable technology vendors.

Helping businesses efficiently leverage industrial data is Siemens, a leading provider of technology solutions. A frontrunner in industrial automation, Siemens is focused on serving the business transformation needs of companies with its wide portfolio of products, services, and market-specific solutions. “Siemens creates technologies with purpose. Our technologies empower our customers to create agile factories, intelligent buildings and energy grids, sustainable transportation, and better healthcare systems,” says Roland Busch, president and CEO of Siemens.

Dedicated to creating innovative, intelligent technologies, Siemens has developed a trio of state-of-the-art IIoT solutions – Industrial Edge, MindSphere versatility, Siemens IIoT solutions help businesses succeed in the market through the perfect integration of data and digitalization.

A Trio of Smart Solutions

Siemens’ cloud and edge computing solution Industrial Edge pulls machine data in real-time at scale to improve industrial production processes – helping manufacturing businesses simplify their shop floor IT by using automation technology – and offers a safe and flexible way to collect and analyze data from machines and manufacturing plants. Accessing data from production machines, tools and plant processes, Industrial Edge transforms endless volumes of data into limitless opportunities, enabling businesses to make the most of their data.

Industrial Edge offers both local and decentralized data processing at the origins of data generation and sends the processed data to the cloud in small data packets, reducing data storage and transmission costs. Local data processing using Industrial Edge lets businesses save data and perform real-time data analysis at the machine, while central management of edge devices and applications reduces deployment and maintenance expenditures. Simultaneously, Industrial Edge allows businesses full control over their data, providing them with the option to either store their processed data in the cloud or at their own premises or Industrial Edge can also be quickly and easily integrated into existing automation and IT environments, helping businesses onboard effortlessly and deploy faster data processing.

Our technologies empower our customers to create agile factories, intelligent buildings and energy grids, sustainable transportation, and better healthcare systems

To better facilitate edge and cloud computing, Siemens’ comprehensive ‘IIoT as a service’ solution MindSphere uses advanced analytics and AI to power IoT solutions from the edge to the cloud. MindSphere enables customers and partners to quickly build and integrate personalized IoT applications addressing specific use cases by ingesting and visualizing real-time data and analytics in a central location and powering the convergence of IT and OT, supporting proactive operational decision-making. Additionally, to help businesses turn their products into a service, MindSphere takes an Anything as a Service (XaaS) approach to enable original equipment manufacturers to increase the efficiency and business value of their offering by reducing initial investments and material wastes.

MindSphere has two separate plans to cater to the data analysis needs of businesses and developers. The MindAccess IoT Value Plan allows businesses to analyze machine data and processes, while the MindAccess DevOps Plan enables developers to offer and run their own solutions on the MindSphere platform. For businesses, MindSphere offers scalable solutions, continuous insights, comprehensive analytics, and custom digital strategies to meet their industrial needs. Additionally, MindSphere’s Global Power Ecosystem provides businesses with domain expertise from across the world to help translate IoT data into actionable insights. Cloud connectivity further allows remote access to machine data, while Power IoT solutions with advanced analytics help in optimizing asset productivity and improve processes for businesses. MindSphere enables developers to develop and manage their own solutions, and build and sell apps – all the while ensuring a secure, reliable, and scalable system. To assist developers, MindSphere’s Edge2Web Director has the capability to quickly build a wide variety analytics and events.

MindSphere is built on Mendix, Siemens’ all-in-one low-code application development platform that uses AI, intelligent automation and data integration to allow businesses to build apps faster with fewer resources without requiring much coding knowledge. Be it boosting businesses’ operational efficiency, helping IIoT technology connect and integrate with companies’ edge devices, assets and data systems, and launching new industrial products, the Mendix platform brings it all together, creating unique digital experiences for businesses and their customers.

Aiming to simplify IT and OT convergence, Mendix facilitates the collaboration of domain experts and developers to build value-driving solutions, empowering them to build impactful applications quickly by abstracting and automating the development process. Intending to meet organizations’ needs to build and integrate IIoT solutions, Mendix connects AI and cognitive services to deliver end-to-end process automation in a fast and easy manner. Additionally, multiple cloud options in Mendix lets organizations deploy their app from one place to anywhere with one click.

Individually or combined, Siemens IIoT solutions have the ability to provide businesses with unprecedented levels of freedom, control and transparency. Developing more such turnkey solutions and applications for businesses of today and tomorrow, Siemens will continue to extend the limits of intelligent technology and pave the path for a smarter future.