Industrial Transformation Blog

LNS recently participated in Plex Systems’ annual customer event, PowerPlex 2020, which was held virtually for the first time.  Three themes emerged from the event. 

In previous blogs and articles, I have written about the new “OT Ecosystem.” Over the past few months I had a chance to observe what’s happening in the market with a number of automation and software vendors, so I thought this would be a good time to revisit the OT Ecosystem, delve deeper into what it is and what it means, and why it is important.

It should be “event season” except, as my daughter says, “everything is cancelled.”  Vendors have three choices in this era of Social Distancing: cancel their event, postpone their event, or go virtual. iBASEt has gone the “postpone” route with a goal of having their customer conference Excelerate 2020 in the fall.  In the meantime, they briefed LNS Research on their progress.

It’s been 10 months since GE Digital appointed new CEO Patrick Byrne. In our last blog, after their September 2019 User Group meeting, we said, “GE Digital has re-emerged with renewed focus led by fresh, engineering-grounded, no-nonsense leadership in Pat Byrne. We look forward to seeing if this new positive momentum is sustainable.” So what’s happened since then? Let’s take a look under the hood and see what Pat and his team have been doing. 

In December 2019, 60k attendees descended upon Las Vegas for AWS re:Invent. Just like Amazon Web Services (AWS) generally, re:Invent is fast-growing and overwhelms with its sheer breadth of content. With dozens of announcements and multiple keynotes from senior executives, including an analyst-only session with AWS CEO Andy Jassy, re:Invent has quickly become a can’t miss tech event. Jassy clearly took pleasure in the success of AWS, as he should. Started in 2006, after just 13 years, the division has grown to $36B in revenue, is still growing at 35% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), and is Amazon’s most profitable.

LNS Research recently attended Oracle OpenWorld 2019 in San Francisco. One of the mega technology events for the Golden Gate City, the conference took over all three halls at the Moscone Center and had over 60,000 attendees.

Oracle is now over $40 billion in revenue (2018) with over 137,000 employees; it positions itself as the number one supplier of business software. The company is clearly innovating in many directions. The event covers the two sides of Oracle: Oracle, the technology, and Oracle, the applications vendor. Additionally, the firm has sophisticated positioning for “emerging technologies.” So, let’s examine each, and determine if this means Oracle can finally engage deeply in the plant.

In April 2019 LNS attended the first annual IBM IoT Exchange event held in Orlando, FL. The company focused its three-day conference on how to achieve operational efficiency and effectiveness, and reduce costs through the application of IoT data and artificial intelligence (AI).  The conference marked the first time that users of IBM’s engineering lifecycle management (DOORS family), enterprise asset management (Maximo portfolio), facilities lifecycle management (TRIRIGA), and the Watson IoT Platform solutions all met together under the Watson IoT umbrella.

Over 4,000 people attended Epicor Insights 2019 in Las Vegas the week of April 15. As in previous years, the conference showcased new products and upgrades from a leading supplier of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for the mid-market, with users across manufacturing, distribution, service, and retail companies.

Sparta Systems is an interesting firm. Well known for its on-premise TrackWise product, it had stumbled in recent years as it faced many new cloud-based competitors. Over the past year, it brought on a new leadership team and put its considerable weight behind the development of its Force.com-based TrackWise Digital cloud product. As we look at the Summer 2019 release of TrackWise Digital, has the effort paid off?

The LNS Research globetrotting team found itself in Hannover last week, excited to see what’s new in the world of Industrial Transformation (IX). The event was as full (or perhaps even busier) than the last two years, it was noticeable that the space for software companies was substantially larger, and the big guys had toned down the one-upmanship: gone were the enormous jet engines, tractors, and other boys’ toys. In their place were small booths demonstrating the latest solutions and lots of open space with tables and chairs for better interaction with show-goers and potential customers.