Strategic Alliance Magazine Q4 2019 - 12

Cover Story:

FACTORIES OF THE FUTURE

When I first mentioned to someone that I was
working on a piece about IT and OT companies coming together, he was puzzled. "OT?" he
asked. "Meaning 'old technology'?"
Hardly. Some of the attitudes in OT-operational technology-may seem "old," but that is changing too, and new technology is rapidly transforming the plants and manufacturing facilities of the past into the factories of the future, also
known as Industry 4.0. What's driving this change? Global
markets, of course, fierce competition, the need for time and
cost savings, and increasingly the demands for connectivity
and continuous improvement throughout the product life
cycle that can now be met via the Internet of Things (IoT),
artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, virtual and
augmented reality (VR/AR), 3-D imaging and printing, and
other technologies.
Industrial companies-whether in aerospace and defense,
automotive, oil and gas, manufacturing, and elsewhere-
are no longer simply buying machines, parts, and lubricant.
Now they must access edge computing solutions, cloud data
storage and backup, computer assisted design and digital twin
technologies, product life cycle management solutions, holographic augmented reality service programs, and more. To
get that access and to better understand the specific solutions
that will best meet their requirements, they need help-and
they're getting it: from big IT companies, from systems integrators, from consultants with deep industry expertise, and
from companies that straddle the line between the worlds of
information technology and operational technology.

and sell IT solutions to industry. The go-to-market strategies that emerge from these engagements also often include
systems integrators like Capgemini and Accenture. Whatever
the combinations, they are designed to help industrial companies facing increasing competitive pressures to make
optimum use of the latest technology. To do that, OT companies that have often worked the same way with the same partners and supply chain for decades must now make sense of a
changing landscape, with ecosystems of new partners coming
from very different realms.
"All these companies have been working with an ecosystem
of industrial partners to make sure that everything is compatible," Pinard said. "The reality is that this ecosystem has
really exploded. I remember six or seven years ago, we had
some slides and we were showing the ecosystem of industry,
IT, IoT. The first IoT ecosystem slide-you had 10, 15 companies. The year after, it was beginning to be more [like] 100,
and the year after that you could not choose one slide, it was
impossible. So it's really expanding, growing so fast, [with] so
many actors that it's very difficult for one or two companies,
whatever their understanding of the market, to be as agile and
quick to integrate all these ecosystems.

It's, as one company website put it, "the convergence of the
physical and digital worlds." And it's not your grandfather's-
or even your father's-factory anymore.

"What has changed is that when you used to deal with, let's
say, your sisters, brothers-ecosystem partners that are very
much industrial partners-you now have to deal with IT ecosystem partners, and that's a different conversation, because
they are much more flexible, agile, they want to show and
bring the value. That's a game changer. You have to adapt
yourself, and instead of talking to only OT, to move to the
other side of the barrier. The big change is that you are not
involving only the usual suspects of industry; you have to
involve the more IT-centric companies. That's a different
approach you need to have."

No Longer the Usual Suspects

From the Complex Down to the Simple

"The reality is that from a customer standpoint, [industrial
companies] know what they want to get from [a] solution-
cost savings, user experience, whatever, depending on who
you talk to in the company. Everybody once thought the
cloud was only a nice trend, but it's changing behaviors-the
process, the procurement, [the way] you deal with technology. It's very much disruptive for companies that have to
really understand now that it's not going to be the usual ecosystem of typical industrial partners you can work with and
nothing new," said Christophe Pinard, CSAP, global alliances
director and co-sell lead for Schneider Electric.

US-based PTC comes from more of the software/IT end of
things, but is a company that is nonetheless very active in
partnering to sell solutions to industry and has some history
of doing so. These days, however, it needs partners that will
provide the deep industry expertise it may lack, and the credibility on the factory floor-in addition to the other components of the solution from a technological standpoint. It's
a complex process, but the goal in the end is to boil things
down to result in a simpler solution for the end customer,
according to Kevin O'Brien, senior vice president, strategic
alliances sales for PTC.

Pinard heads up a team that works with some of Schneider's
core partners, such as Cisco and Microsoft, to pull together

"It all revolves around the customer. If you look at the
Internet of Things or the Industrial Internet of Things, it's a

Strategic Alliance QUARTERLY

| Q4 2019

Strategic Alliance Magazine Q4 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Strategic Alliance Magazine Q4 2019