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These are still the early days of
platform building on the Industrial
Internet. Companies such as GE and
Siemens are staking their claims now.
GE has announced its goal to be “the
world’s first digital industrial company”;
its cloud-based Predix platform
combines data analytics, connectivity,
cyber-protection, and offerings such
as the Digital Twin, a simulation of
industrial processes based on digital
profiles of more than half a million
machines. Siemens is developing its
equally ambitious MindSphere platform
in collaboration with Microsoft,
offering its apps on the Azure cloud
starting in 2017.
the old industrial system, the platform is to the new. A platform is a combination
of interoperable standards and systems. It creates a plug-and-play technological
base on which a wide range of vendors and customers can interact seamlessly
with the same collection of hardware, software, services, and one another. The
most successful platforms match customers with vendors, maintain an appealing
and effective customer experience, and collect data and rents from people
who use the system. A business that controls a popular platform — Microsoft
with Windows, Apple with its mobile iOS, Amazon with its “everything store”
merchandising system, Facebook with social media, and Google with its search
engine — can influence the direction of evolution for a business-to-consumer
market. The same will be true of the new industrial operating systems for
business-to-business markets. The users of a platform become, in effect, an
ecosystem: a group of companies exchanging goods and services, their fates
bound together.
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Other industrial platforms are more
narrow, but equally profitable. For
example, the Trumpf company, based
in Germany, has established a platform
called Axoom, which provides laser
equipment, welding, and metalworking
equipment for the many small
companies that build components
from metal and plastic, giving them all
access to specialized 3D printing tools
and software. There will be platforms
for specific types of supply chains,
and platforms for hospitals, banks,
and other types of organizations. As
automobiles evolve into autonomous
vehicles, they will be designed as
platforms, operating within “smart city”
platforms that continue to improve the
ways in which autonomous vehicles
navigate.
Your first step in establishing yourself
as a participant in the Industrial
Internet is to figure out what role you
can realistically play in this platform-
based world. Will you be a platform
“enabler” like Trumpf, GE, and Siemens,
a company responsible for building
(and owning) the underlying megahubs?
Will you be an “engager” of customers,
using the platform as a vehicle for
providing products and services?