PAC launches annual INNOVATION RADAR

Market research and strategic consulting firm PAC presents its seven-part PAC INNOVATION RADAR “Open Digital Platforms for the Industrial World in Europe 2022”. It is the broadest analysis of the vendor landscape for open digital platforms for use in industrial contexts. In seven RADAR segments, PAC reviews close to 120 platform vendors and evaluates 66 of them in the European market.

PAC annually evaluates the vendor landscape around open digital platforms for industrial purposes in the European market. The focus of these RADARs lies on differentiating between different concepts and evaluating new emerging topics. The 2022 launch of the Open Digital Platform for the Industrial World in Europe Innovation RADAR adds two emerging topics into the evaluation – secure, zero-touch industrial IoT deployments, and software-defined vehicles and robots.

Differentiating between industrial cloud and industrial edge-centric concepts

In a high-speed world, no individual application creates a long-term competitive advantage – it is platforms with the ability to develop, deploy, and scale AI-driven applications faster that make a difference. The same is true for the industrial world. From PAC’s perspective, the industrial world needs an agile and efficient software platform for application lifecycle management. The relevant technical fundament to improve agility around application development include low-code capabilities, microservice architectures, and container technology. To maximize efficiency around large-scale application deployments, automation and self-service capabilities (via an app store model) are relevant aspects. “While the sensor level at the edge remains to be the fundamental data source for all IoT purposes, the cloud builds the center for IoT-related application lifecycle management,” says Arnold Vogt, Head of Digital Innovation & IoT at PAC. “Data processing typically happens in a hybrid model in between – edge and cloud. But different concepts exist, which can be distinguished by their data processing core.”

New emerging topics – secure IIoT deployments and software-defined vehicles and robots

While PAC added new emerging topics to this analysis already in the past, such as platforms for connected workers and open-source-based IoT, two more topics have been added in 2022:

Secure, zero-touch industrial IoT deployments – The report focuses on vendors with the capability to provide integrated, secure and automated solutions to support industrial IoT deployments at a larger scale. These solutions address the needs of device manufacturers and machine builders, automotives, telcos and the defense sector, as well as energy and utilities companies. “Cybersecurity is one of the top challenges for companies today. This is especially critical in the IoT context. The deployment phase of new IoT devices is a sensitive moment in securing IoT devices throughout their lifecycle.” – Arnold Vogt.

Software-defined vehicles and robots: To accelerate the time-to-market for new on-device software and to improve the efficiency of large-scale software deployments, cloud-based application lifecycle management is crucial. “Software-defined vehicles and robots are a new hot topic in the market. The IT architectures of vehicles and robots are undergoing a fundamental change.” – Arnold Vogt.

Due to the strategic relevance of the software business for their future, there is a clear ambition of device manufacturers to build their own operating systems (VW.OS, MB.OS, KUKA iiQKA.OS). The slow progress of these initiatives, however, indicates that it is not a simple task for these rather hardware-centric companies. As a result, “buy” instead of “make” can be an appropriate way for many vehicle, robot and other device manufacturers to accelerate their go-to-market in a world of software-defined things. In this light, it makes sense to evaluate what existing vendors of safety-certified real-time operating systems (RTOS) for vehicles and robots are doing around IoT and edge computing.

www.pac-radar.com

News release from PAC, 01/08/2022

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