Gartner’s Deep Dive into Cloud Analytic Companies

One of the significant trends for the last two years in the industrial manufacturing space as it relates to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has been partnerships among automation companies, suppliers, system integrators and, of course, cloud-based software — or as a service — analytic companies.

For the end user, it’s hard to evaluate all these cloud platforms and compare benefits. With the new Gartner Magic Quadrant for Industrial IoT Platforms report, just released on May 10, 2018, plant and process personnel can gain better insights asset management-based applications in industrial manufacturing, transportation and utilities.

Excerpt from the IIoT platform qualities section: 

Deployment requirements in IIoT are complex and often regulated. This situation results in significant integration challenges to ensure the safety of life, mission criticality of systems, and data security and privacy. The primary enterprise applications (for example, MES, ERP, APM/CBM and EAM/CMMS) drive the solutions, with IoT services running on the cloud or on-premises or as a hybrid implementation. Today, IIoT must be able to address both on-premises deployment requirements and cloud requirements.

With its asset-management focus, IIoT report’s guidelines and its definition of an IIoT platform include device management, integration, data management, analytics and application enablement. For operations and maintenance teams (O&M), the report excludes computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) and maintenance repair and operations (MROs) programs. However, as we know from real-world examples, such as Molson Coors MRO initiative that maintenance and reliability groups are joining IoT modernization — funded — projects. Live applications have their own demarcation lines.

Bottom line, the report provides a detailed analysis of the competing companies and creates a graph called the “Magic Quadrant” with leaders, visionaries, challengers, etc.

Efficient Plant’s Take: As the plant or factory ecosystems move more toward these cloud platforms, this guide/analysis provides a good overview of the big picture with company offerings. It’s a valuable asset for the O&M teams, which have to provide input on what is needed in analytics platform or this critical move could be hampered.

>> Full Report | Gartner Magic Quadrant for Industrial IoT Platforms