To learn more about the newly launched Siemens Xcelerator open business platform, we sat down with Brenda Discher, SVP Business Strategy and Marketing, Siemens Digital Industries Software, to learn more about why Siemens is launching this, what opportunities it provides to industry and how Siemens’ portfolio of software fits into the picture.
Hi Brenda, Siemens AG has just announced Siemens Xcelerator yet Xcelerator is something that Siemens Digital Industries Software has been talking about for a few years. What’s new?
Brenda Discher: Siemens Xcelerator is an open digital business platform that will accelerate digital transformation and value creation for customers of all sizes across industry, buildings, grids and mobility by making it easier, faster and more scalable. Of course, the Xcelerator name is not new to our Siemens Digital Industries Software community. In 2019 we integrated our portfolio of engineering software, services and application development platform as Xcelerator to bring together the industry’s broadest and deepest solutions to help our industrial customers transform. Now, as part of its transformation into a technology company, Siemens is applying that same approach across all parts of the business and expanded Siemens Xcelerator from a portfolio into an unique digital business platform for the entire company.
In the last three years, organizations from startup companies to household brand names have used Xcelerator in ways we never imagined. From mapping our oceans with autonomous self-guided drones to exploring the stars with the next generation spaceplane, Xcelerator has become a foundational platform for innovation for leaders, pioneers and true innovators across (and in orbit around) the globe. We extended Xcelerator to the cloud last year with the introduction of Xcelerator as a Service and, together with our customers, Xcelerator has continued to blur the boundaries between engineering domains and speed digital transformation at companies around the world.
How do you feel the new Siemens Xcelerator platform launch affect your customers already using the Xcelerator software portfolio?
Xcelerator as you know it will remain– it still represents a portfolio of digital offerings, but now that portfolio is getting much, much bigger. In addition to the curated portfolio of internet of things (IoT)-enabled hardware, software and digital services from Siemens and certified third parties, Siemens Xcelerator also includes a growing ecosystem of partners; and an evolving marketplace to facilitate interaction between Siemens, our customers, partners and developers.
Why are Siemens launching this now?
Our goal is to bring together the physical and digital worlds, combining the realms of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) to break down the silos between industry, buildings, transportation and grids. We will continue to offer the industry’s most comprehensive digital twin, but now with the addition of solutions from across the company and from our partners, we can more closely connect the real and the digital worlds — from the factory control software and automation to edge computing devices, from chips to cities and all points in between.
What is the difference between the existing Xcelerator portfolio and the Siemens Xcelerator platform?
We differentiate between a “portfolio” which is what Siemens Digital Industries Software calls Xcelerator and an “open digital business platform” for Siemens Xcelerator. Our software-focused Xcelerator will continue to deliver a modular, curated portfolio that includes all existing software products, including as-a-Service solutions. The portfolio will also include software and IoT-enabled hardware from other Digital Industries business units as well as from Smart Infrastructure and Mobility, expanding customer scope beyond industrial companies to buildings, grids and transportation. Siemens Xcelerator will also include a growing, powerful ecosystem of more than 4,000 certified partners; and a marketplace to explore, educate, exchange and purchase alongside a community of customers, partners, and experts.
Do you have examples of new offerings that will become available on the Siemens Xcelerator platform?
New offerings will be added to our portfolio as we deliver on this vision for Siemens Xcelerator. Today, we showcased our plans to deliver a next generation industrial internet of things (IIoT) solution as part of Siemens Xcelerator. Industrial Operations X will bring together solutions and applications from sensor to edge to cloud, IoT as a service and low code development capabilities, as well as a wide range of ready-to-use apps. This will enable the fusion of data from the real world of automation with the digital world of information and engineering technology, enriched by our comprehensive vertical IT/ OT integration knowledge and services.
Siemens Xcelerator has always been flexible and modern, and this approach will continue, and we will empower the development of new offerings on top of Xcelerator to solve a greater number of customer challenges through personalized solutions.
We recognize that digital transformation is an ongoing effort that takes a massive network of partners and developers to succeed. One of the newest additions to the open and growing Xcelerator ecosystem is NVIDIA as part of an expanded partnership between our companies. As part of the effort to build an industrial metaverse, we will connect the Siemens Xcelerator and NVIDIA Omniverse platforms to usher a new era of-AI enabled, photorealistic, physics-based digital twins that drive efficiency and transform industries taking industrial automation to a new level. The first pilot will be a solution for BMW’s showcase electric vehicle manufacturing site in Debrecen, Hungary.
