Look Back At 2015 & Our APM Predictions

Hitting a moving target is difficult, especially when you consider predicting what will transpire in the fast-pace Asset Performance Management (APM) solution landscape. As the take stock in 2015, we saw a lot happen this year, from on and off again mergers, fruitful partnerships and a clearer picture of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platform.

Last January we introduced the idea of Asset Performance Management predictions to help our reader’s understand what the future may hold. The blog, entitled,”3 Predictions for APM”, provided insight and expectations on what to expect in 2015. Now the time has come to review these predictions so we can continue to have fruitful discussion and comments as we enter 2016.

APM Research Library Let Loose

This wasn’t one of our 3 predictions, but we are proud of the introduction of the APM Research Library, chock full of reports on best practices, presentations, and research spotlights. Our latest body of work, cultivated through many hours of working with a fantastic vendor community, is our Solution Selection Guide for APM. This guide covers a total of 20 vendors from point solutions to broader solution suites in order to understand the varying degrees of functionality that the APM landscape has to offer.

2015 Predictions, How Did We Do?

1: APM Will Be a Poster Child for the Big Three Tech Issues

The big three technology trends in manufacturing are generally recognized as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud/Big Data, and mobility. All three of these technology trends are manifesting themselves across manufacturing. From the shop floor right on up to the front office, all of these technology trends are impacting business, but all of them are suffering from a lot of skepticism as to what the actual payoff for investing in these technologies really is.

For example, our survey respondents in our new IIoT Survey are developing the following use cases, of the top 3 business cases, 2 are squarely centered on Asset Performance Management.

So the bottom line for all three of these tech trends is that the APM space will generate among the largest number of successful examples as well as the examples with the largest and most consistent paybacks. APM will become the Poster Child for tech.

What are the top IIOT use cases your company is pursuing today? (N=252)

2: Analytics Will Drive APM Payoff

APM is delivering real value today in the form of downtime reduction, improved productivity, and higher product and service quality. The number one contributor to these results is the application of analytics to both the data collected from individual machines, as well as aggregated data in the cloud.

Predictive analytics was the key message the deliverable produced in 2015, as the vendor community jumped in to this space big time with new solutions, acquisitions, and the continued development of IIoT platforms that are provided increased access to data not used previously.

In our own Asset Performance Survey, we continue to see a strong trend towards end-users having easy access to real-time and historical data. As predicted and as we discussed end-user strategies around APM, the number one application that was driving payback was analytics.

How would you describe your organizations visibility into APM data in terms of granularity? (N=172)

3: APM Solution Providers Will Remain Stratified in 3 Categories

APM is a broad space representing disciplines and application areas ranging from MRO procurement right down to intelligent “pending failure” alarming on the plant floor by smart machines.

In 2015, the APM space remained stratified into three categories: Automation companies, Specialist APM firms, and Enterprise Suite solution providers. New market entrants continued to jump into the APM space, but there continued to be no large scale consolidation.

As for our survey results, most respondents view all three categories as contributors to their success. A very close second is Enterprise Software providers. We believe this is due to their ability to branch out of their core competencies and provide adequate functionality in other areas of the APM landscape.

Which description best describes how you view the providers of APM solutions as contributors to your success? (N=168)

Happy New Year!

Stay tuned in January for our 2016 predictions! We look forward to doing as good or better when making our predictions for APM in 2016, as our responses continue to grow in our APM survey. Stay tuned for that blog in January. We are also excited for what the New Year holds in working with our great end-user and vendor communities as we all drive towards continued innovation in the APM Landscape.

Good luck with all your New Year’s resolutions and may you have a successful 2016!

Understand the capabilities of twenty of the leading vendors in the APM space by downloading our APM Solutions Section Guide. The guide contains comparison charts for the factors listed above and the detailed profiles of the twenty vendors ranging from automation companies, to enterprise software providers and includes many specialized APM solutions as well.