You might have heard of this buzz phrase “Data is now the 21st century new oil.”
What it really means it that with access to data comes business opportunities.
Data drives the development of ideas, products and new capabilities previously unheard of.
Suddenly, with insights gleaned from data, new knowledge ensued, empowering businesses to expand horizon and taps into unchartered areas with confidence.
Gone were the days when business decisions were made by gut-feel. Decision making can now be backed up by facts and figures, rather than feelings.
But the real question is : How to make data accessible with ease. The answer to this question is inter-operability, powered by standards such as Open Platform Communication – Unified Architecture OPC-UA. In the past, devices, equipment, machines, etc all talk proprietary language in the hope to ring-fence market segments, giving rise to barriers for inter-machine communication. This increases the cost of businesses, often translated to higher cost of products and services for the end users.
However, as technology advances, customers demand better, cheaper and faster access to goods and services. This mindset change forces industry to rethink this ‘protection mindset’. Instead, cooperation between different vendors is not a luxury, rather a market requirement. To cooperate effectively, devices, equipment and machines are now required to ‘speak the same language’. This breaks down the barrier and forces businesses to transform the way they see competition. Instead of competing for market share using traditional model of ‘ring-fencing’, where customers are forced to buy a particular brand of products, businesses now have to compete for market share by continuously innovating their products and services instead of locking-in by technology (often propriety and non-interoperable).
What does all these mean?
For the consumers it is obvious. Access to better quality products and services with lower price tags, all driven by the need for businesses to innovate and transform.
For the businesses, access to better and fit-for-purposes technologies drives down costs and encourage healthy cooperative-competition. This levels the playing field and is especially important for businesses to stay nimble and razor-focused on the needs of customers. With new technologies such as Cloud Data Analytics and Machine Learning capabilities, this opens up the doors for more innovation.
The key differentiator is the approach. Traditionally proprietary methods are expensive, slow to implement and lacks the push to adopt standards for interoperability. Today, with maxMachines, it is no more proprietary, is standards-based which ensures interoperability between different vendors. This reduces the time-to-market.
In summary, there is tremendous traction and opportunities to all equipment manufacturers, software applications integrator to come together to drive innovation. To achieve this, new modern tools and technologies are needed to accelerate the digitalisation processes. maxMachines is in a pole position to be the ‘Digital Enabler for Industry 4.0 revolution’.