IoT & Industry 4.0: Knowledge about the world

The digital transformation is a data metamorphosis. Data that used to be lost or only temporarily available in analog form is now logged by sensors and archived via the Internet.

The data itself has always been there - such as the temperature display of a thermometer. Today, the thermometer has several sensors built in, as well as an Internet interface.

Analog data becomes archived information through digital metamorphosis - the revolution of digital transformation.

The social significance of networked refrigerators and self-driving cars will be debated for a long time. The business and organizational significance of thousands of sensors in production, trade and logistics is beyond doubt: The added value from the more information is proven!

By its very nature, it is not enough for digital transformation to provide a few sensors with an Internet interface on the one hand and storage space in the cloud - cloud computing - on the other.

Technology is a prerequisite for digital transformation, but the added value comes from business management, from the ERP system. This conclusively proves why IoT is an important topic for existing SAP customers.

SAP itself summarizes its IoT activities under the Leonardo framework. Due to the importance of the topic and the scope of the content, E-3 Verlag will present a pilot edition of leonardo.report at the DSAG annual congress in October and, starting in 2019, will report quarterly on IoT and Industrie 4.0 as well as all SAP Leonardo topics with the magazine leonardo.report and associated online channels.

IoT or Industry 4.0? For existing SAP customers, the term and the topic of IoT are more comprehensive and important because it includes all sensors and Internet interfaces, whether in industry or consumer goods.

The term Industry 4.0 was coined and popularized by former SAP CEO Professor Henning Kagermann, who is now a member of the Acatech presidium (German Academy of Science and Engineering). It is therefore legitimate to use both terms for digitalization in production, commerce and logistics.

IoT Sources & Knowledge

SAP's existing customers will not be able to avoid the topic of IoT. However, IoT is not one of SAP's core competencies, and other companies and SAP's existing customers have taken up the topic much earlier than SAP.

This results in the following situation: Without IoT, there will be no digital transformation in the SAP community either, but SAP itself is not the first source of information and supply for this topic for SAP's existing customers.

Tanja Rückert, executive vice president for Digital Assets & IoT at SAP and a leader at Bosch starting next summer, said:

"With SAP Leonardo, on the one hand, we connect things with business processes, making them immediate and proactive. On the other hand, we are also bringing things and people together so that they can work more efficiently thanks to extended intelligence and autonomous systems.

With the SAP Leonardo IoT portfolio, we are delivering on our promise to provide customers with special added value through IoT innovations."

MindSphere World

SAP is on the right track with Leonardo, but to master it will require much more than SAP will ever be able to offer.

Every existing SAP customer is therefore well advised to think outside the box and use other sources of knowledge: The industry is taking great strides toward digitization and the use of IoT applications and applications.

With MindSphere, Siemens has developed a high-performance cloud-based, open IoT operating system for this purpose. Together with 18 partner companies, Siemens is founding the global user organization MindSphere World for the cloud-based, open IoT operating system MindSphere.

The goal is to expand the ecosystem around MindSphere worldwide. In addition, the association is to support the individual members in the development and optimization of IoT solutions on MindSphere as well as the development of new markets in the digital economy.

These include proposals on requirements for the MindSphere IoT operating system and recommendations for creating uniform rules of the game for data use.

The association also promotes science, research and education around MindSphere.

"The creation of MindSphere World is another important step to promote the global spread of the ecosystem around MindSphere as an open IoT platform.

The broad know-how and offering of all partners in MindSphere World opens up completely new potentials in digitization for users worldwide."

said Klaus Helmrich, member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG.