IBM’s Watson IoT business unit recently held an IoT Exchange in Sydney, comprising separate ‘academies’ focussing on Watson IoT’s role in enterprise asset management (Maximo), real estate/facilities management (Tririga) and engineering lifecycle management (Engineering).
IoT Australia caught up with Kareem Yusuf, general manager of IBM’s Watson IoT business unit and Joe Berti, vice president offering management in Watson IoT. This is an edited transcript of that interview
IoTAustralia:Tell me about Watson IoT. To what extent do you offer it as a generic IoT platform and how much as the underpinning of specific solutions?
Yusuf: The IoT platform represents something we embed within our solutions as well as provide standalone to clients and business partners. But, in contrast to other IoT platform vendors, we have an application suite in the Maximo, Tririga and Engineering families, particularly with Maximo and Tririga, those applications need to be transformed with IoT data.
We do provide a generic IoT platform, but most of our clients actually consume the IoT platform in the context of the application suites. So we’re driving asset performance management, or we’re driving building insights with Tririga. Every single one of those clients are using the IoT platform, but we build it in, because that’s how we power that capability.
And that to my mind is more important than having a standalone IoT platform.
We have partners who take the IoT platform and build it into other solution spaces as well. And we do have some end user clients who have done that to solve very specific problems that have little to do with the world of asset management or predictive maintenance.
What I think everybody has seen is that IoT platforms are interesting, but it’s really about the application you put against the data. So for me, it’s very much about the solution and applications that we build off an IoT platform.
IoTA:So would you say that the great majority of the uses of Watson IoT are specific solutions that you have developed?
Yusuf: I need to create a distinction between the Business Unit Name, Watson IoT, that I run and the actual solutions we provide and what our clients actually experience.
Most of our clients experience us either through the lens of Maximo enterprise asset management or Tririga real estate operations and facilities management. Our Engineering portfolio for engineering lifecycle management for systems engineering.
All of these things sit in a business unit that I lead called Watson IoT. But really, what’s relevant is that portfolio. If you think of the installed base. Maximo is probably the largest, it is number one in its space.
IoTA:The name Watson is synonymous with artificial intelligence. How much is AI a feature of Watson IoT implementations. Some of the videos on your web site seem to focus on its role as a core IoT platform.
In reality, most of my clients want to gain the value of AI without actually doing an AI project. So if you look at what we demo today, all those models are built on Watson machine learning.
We leverage various other elements of Watson. We build off the IBM AI data platform, But our mission, and our job, is for our client to get those benefits without actually having to do an AI implementation.
You heard me use the phrase this morning ‘pragmatic AI’. I’m very focused in our clients getting the value of AI in a context they readily understand and can move forward with, versus it being this other thing on the side.
IoTA: Do you see any other particular verticals to move into?
Yusuf: At this point I am very focussed on those three, I think they have not yet finished transforming. They are literally at the beginning.
If you look at the world of enterprise asset management, I would say the vast majority of assets under management are still being managed with conditional maintenance. They’re still not yet instrumented. So there’s a lot to do in those areas.
And remember, enterprise asset management spans quite a few verticals in its own right: energy and utilities, chemical and petroleum, government, industrial manufacturing, aerospace and defence. So there’s a lot going on there.
If you look at the Tririga world, and just think about real estate management, that’s another one that goes across quite a few verticals: commercial buildings, retail, banking, and government again, where they’ve got lots of square footage under management.
When you think about systems engineering, you’re in aerospace and defence, you’re in electronics, you’re in automobiles.
There is a lot in those areas to move forward with to help the clients achieve the transformation that we all can see coming. So I haven’t really thought about establishing another vertical. I think it’s more about how we transform these verticals that we are in. Because the journey has just begun.
IoTA: Do you work with any particular manufacturers of the equipment that’s used in some of those verticals?
Yusuf: Yes, we do, with OEMs as well as operators. But most of our clients are operating multiple equipment from multiple vendors. So it’s very much more about recognising that world than it is about picking one particular manufacturer to work with. We just have to meet our clients where they live. And I think that differentiates us from others who may be highly tied to just one manufacturer.
When our clients are implementing a Maximo based solution for example, it is a repository of varied machine types. When we begin to do predictive analytics, or look at how different pieces are working, we are typically working across a varied pool.
This is still an area with much room for innovation and growth. But that’s our calling card, It doesn’t matter what our clients have. We’ve always been a generic player.
IoTA: Do you get issues where vendors of particular equipment want to keep control of the monitoring so they can keep ownership of the customer, and it’s difficult to get access to the data feeds you need from them?
Yusuf: You can see that in the press. You can observe business strategies, and see how various manufacturers or vendors have tried to own that space, but I would say not with a lot of success, because of the inherent heterogeneity.
I would say we have fewer issues only because with Maximo we are well established and a market leader. If you fixate on the client, their problem is looking at the whole thing, not just one machine. When I talk about transforming how people operate, maintain or engineer physical assets, I am talking about tying back into those core business processes which are, by definition, heterogeneous and interconnected.
IoTA: How do you see the space in which Watson IoT operates evolving over the next few years?
Yusuf: I think in some ways it’s going to be extremely boring, and that’s a good thing. The big shift is the increasing digitisation of core processes. Talk to a big retailer about how much money they lose if the escalators between floors stop working.
The whole of industry wants to get better at how they maintain stuff. Digitisation gives them an inroad, because they get more data, they can inform more real time data and they begin to open up to new ways of working.
One of the things that catches my imagination is the whole digital economy that begins to evolve. You get digital content that has to be exchanged, a process today that is all manual.
I think we sit at the centre of enabling that digital exchange, using concepts like digital twins, asset twins, digital marketplaces. I really see that digitisation just enabling new, more efficient ways of working. And I believe once you’ve got new and better ways of working, it frees you up for innovations we can’t even describe right now.
IoTA: There’s a need to be some kind of standards for this, that enable you to incorporate heterogeneous equipment and devices into a comprehensive system like Watson IoT. Is that happening, or is that still a big hurdle?
Berti: There are standards, but there are still gaps. For example, there’s no standard as to how you deliver the uptime model for a piece of equipment.
It is the same as retail was 25 years when Walmart came and said, everyone needs barcodes. It forced the industry to drive the standard. You’ll see the same thing happen, but we’re still the front end of the curve.
Our goal right now is to support the existing standards and then help drive the industry to adopt standards for the areas where there’s gaps. There’s a lot of work to do.
IoTA: Do you see anyone in anyone having other sectors having the clout to do what Walmart di
Berti: I think large operators like an Exxon Mobil will force suppliers to provide information digitally. And it’s going to happen by vertical.
Usually, once the number one, number two, number three in the vertical forces it, then it forces the suppliers to do it.
Right now the issue is around intellectual property. For example, a manufacturer doesn’t want to give out the 3D model of a part because they’re worried about it getting copied.
So there’s got to be a lock and key to the digital twin marketplace, and we’re talking about providing that lock and key to encrypt the model, similar to music. When you download a song, there’s a digital footprint as to who downloaded it, and who’s listening to it. The same thing needs to happen with this content. Otherwise, manufacturers will not provide it.
Yusuf: I think we will be able to fill in some of the gaps by virtue of our leadership in the market. If you are the default implementation for a large suite of the market, you can almost begin to drive a de facto standard.
We will look for those opportunities as they come up. I think we will get there. I’m not so worried about standards, per se.I’ve got a feeling that if the clear value can be demonstrated then the enablers become less contentious. In the beginning on IoT platforms, everybody was fighting to connect the device. Now everyone’s realising, if you have the connected device your something needs to process that data.
You’re really seeing this value shift from just IoT platforms and collection of data and device management to what we can really do with the IoT platform, with the data.
