A range of success stories showcase the value of ecosystem thinking in different industries relating to the energy transition. These are important to emphasise as they recognize the importance of combining a mix of stakeholders, technologies and organizations in interconnected and interdependent ways.
Ask how we can leverage and use Ecosystem thinking and design to promote innovation within the Energy Transition, as it is a powerful approach to radical change. By fostering collaborations and synergies, you can accelerate the development and adoption of innovative solutions for the energy transition.
Before we look at examples of ecosystem thinking and designs applied, we should consider a step-by-step guide to use and apply ecosystem thinking and design applicable to the energy transition.
Governance needs to constantly “account” for change. Here is a handy reference or reflection of its capacity to deliver:
You need a living environment, one that evolves constantly
+ Here, you must establish a relational, institutional and coordination set of strategic and operational approaches. The “living” document needs to reflect on the constant reshaping of the ecosystem as it evolves and recognize that this is a constantly evolving design.
+ Governance needs to articulate the influencing and coordinating mechanisms, their different levels, and the protocols and procedures to resolve any disputes or pathway directions all would need to follow and adhere to.
+ It needs to determine the boundary conditions and if and when these change, which they are most likely to, there is a mechanism in place to recognize this and determine any new scope, direction or design to be accepted going forward.
+ A governance document must have built into it sufficient commonality and be transparent in its spirit of amiability to coordination and decision-making.
+ It needs to determine the critical driving forces but equally reflect on the different catalyzing forces in tensions and design that individual members will attempt to impose, so there needs a resolution method to be able to go back and refer to.
Siemens Xcelerator Launch with Roland Busch, President and CEO of Siemens AG
Today, 29th June, Siemens launched Siemens Xcelerator across its entire portfolio to accelerate digital transformation and value creation for customers of all sizes in industry, buildings, grids and mobility. The business platform makes the digital transformation easier, faster and scalable.
Xcelerator is an open digital business platform, that will enable hardware, software and digital services from across all of Siemen’s portfolios and also will bring in certified third parties, to provide a growing ecosystem of partners, provide an evolving marketplace to accelerate the digital transformation and provide interactions and transactions between customers, partners and developers. The really big story is the moving toward an Industrial Metaverse through the power of this Xcelerator platform and its future potential in a new exciting partnership with NVIDIA.
This is a step-by-step transformational journey
Roland Busch, President and CEO of Siemens AG remarked Xcelerator “is the logical next step in the implementation of our digitalization strategy to enable even faster innovation and value creation. Siemens Xcelerator brings the power of our focused technology company together with a thriving ecosystem of technology partners. We are joining together to simplify digital transformation so that customers of all sizes can benefit at speed and scale.”
He went on to state “Siemens Xcelerator will make it easier than ever before for companies to navigate digital transformation – faster and at scale. By combining the real and the digital worlds across operational and information technology, we empower customers and partners to boost productivity, competitiveness and scale up innovations.”
“Our leading portfolio is transformed towards more open applications, with more cloud-based and as-a-service solutions and IoT-enabled hardware that can be constantly upgraded. At the same time, the collaboration will reach a new level with a growing ecosystem of partners.”
Siemens generated Euro 62.3 billion in revenue in fiscal 2021, employees around 303,000 employees worldwide that provides solutions to more resource-efficient factories, resilient supply chains, and smarter buildings and grids, to cleaner and more comfortable transportation as well as advanced healthcare. Siemens states very clearly it creates technology with purpose, adding real value for customers.
What Siemens Xcelerator comprises and will move towards achieving
Xcelerator is a curated portfolio, a growing ecosystem and an evolving marketplace that will build out over the coming months and years. The complexity of this transformation is huge. and will be taken step by step.
Siemens Xcelerator Launch with Roland Busch, President and CEO of Siemens AG
It is a very big deal with the commitment of “Siemens will transform its entire portfolio of hardware and software to become modular, cloud-connected and built on standard application programming interfaces (APIs). The highest standards and value for all parties will be ensured by strong technical and commercial governance principles. Siemens and third-party offerings will adhere to the design principles of interoperability, flexibility, openness and as-a-service”
In my view, to take their “entire leading portfolio and transform it towards more open applications, with more cloud-based and as-a-service solutions and IoT-enabled hardware that can be constantly upgraded. At the same time, the collaboration will reach a new level with a growing ecosystem of partners.” is a massive undertaking when you adhere to these design principles of offering interoperability, flexibility, openness and as-a-service.
The launch event was chock full of examples, of industrial leaders from Science & Technology, Space Exploration, Transport, Vehicles, and Grid providers all giving their view of a future, a future of collaborations
Please visit the launch site here where it provides much of the different launch material from todays event.
The need to replicate and learn
A real message was the ambition through Xcelerator is to replicate and learn, to gain from one set of experiences and challenges, in one industry, or a building or grid solution and scale that out, not so much a plug and play but a plug & run. The ability to optimise the end-to-end system value.
During the launch event, three parts to the transformation being undertaken were additionally announced.
• Launch of new Building X end-to-end smart building Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) suite
• Planned acquisition of Brightly Software will accelerate growth in digital buildings complementing Siemens’ smart building portfolio
• Partner ecosystem grows through industrial metaverse partnership with NVIDIA for physics-based, immersive digital twin development
New SaaS launch with Building X kicking this off
Siemens Smart Infrastructure has launched Building X, a new smart building suite that is open, interoperable and fully cloud-based. The suite is the first next-generation offering built on the design principles of Siemens Xcelerator, an open digital business platform launched today to accelerate digital transformation and value creation across industry, transportation, grids and buildings. The “X” stands for delivering these design principles of offering interoperability, flexibility, openness and as-a-service.
Explaining Building X
Building X addresses the challenges of various stakeholders, including building users, investors, real estate companies and facility managers. It acts as a single source of truth to eliminate complexity and supports net-zero targets. Stakeholders can now digitize and use their building data from various sources, disciplines and systems on one single platform, Building X.
This enables a seamless user experience and the integration of their existing software and ecosystem, including third-party applications, through vendor-agnostic connectivity and open application programming interfaces (APIs). The suite offers modular, AI-enabled applications, and built-in cyber security. It also facilitates co-creation with customers and partners to address their challenges faster, thanks to the openness and cloud technology, which means digital transformation can be achieved easier, faster and at scale.
* I will pick up on this in a separate post as it brings to life the modular, scalable, open building suite that is designed to seamlessly integrate building systems to eliminate current complexity and enables the combination of sustainability goals and accelerating solutions to reach net-zero buildings.
Secondly, to build out Building X on Monday, June 27, 2022, Siemens announced the agreement to purchase Brightly Software, a leading U.S.-based asset and maintenance management software company. The acquisition will add Brightly‘s well-established capabilities across key sectors to Siemens’ digital and software know-how in buildings. It will be an additional core element of the Siemens Xcelerator for Buildings portfolio.
Thirdly a partnership announcement that continues to build out the Ecosystem network of Siemens with the announcement that with NVIDIA the plan is for a new era of immersive digital twin technology
Siemens will be making a considerable expansion to its Ecosystem of partners. It is committing significantly to joining forces and growing a strong partner ecosystem, building on existing strategic partnerships including Accenture, Atos, AWS, Bentley, Microsoft and SAP. The intention is to expand the partner ecosystem with multiple small, medium and large companies to solve problems by finding the right partnership solutions.
NVIDIA is the first major partnership agreement under the Siemens Xcelerator umbrella. The two companies today announced an expansion of their partnership to enable the industrial metaverse and increase the use of AI-driven digital twin technology that will help bring industrial automation to a new level. As the first step in this collaboration, the companies plan to connect Siemens Xcelerator, the open digital business platform and NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for 3D design and collaboration. This will enable an industrial metaverse with physics-based digital models from Siemens and AI-enabled, physically accurate, real-time simulation from NVIDIA where companies make decisions faster and with increased confidence.
Here the ambition of building out the Industrial Metaverse begins to come to life. The power of having a digital twin to enable the real and virtual worlds to come together, to be simulated, to be tested, and designed before the actual real world. The exciting partnership offers a significant change to how the digital transformation will travel.
Picking up in the press release and within the event solutions for IIoT are building at a pace equally
A further part of the event mentions that Siemens also plans to integrate its industrial internet of things (IIoT) solutions for industry as Industrial Operations X, which brings together solutions and applications from the 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 technology, enriched by Siemens’ comprehensive vertical IT/ OT integration knowledge and capabilities.
The key here, like all that Xcelerator is planning to do, finding solutions with partners that set about breaking down data silos and customer challenges to help companies to increase their performance, productivity, flexibility and sustainability. That alone is not a small deal it is the ability to enable faster innovation and value creation, to transform and why Xcelerator becomes the connector and power to enable the realization of Siemens being a focused technology company together in a thriving ecosystem of technology partners.
The beginning of a very different Siemens dawned today
The outcome for me is that today’s event begins the transformation of a very different business model for Siemens, one that moves from selling products to selling solutions and outcomes that the customer wants. If they want a box, product, or machine, then fine but if they want a complete solution then Siemens and its partners can find and offer the solution.
I want to absorb the multiple points of what was present here, it was arguable massive in ambition but so is the digital transition. Siemens has put a clear stake in the ground in transforming themselves and providing this Xcelerator platform that brings their portfolio (and others) around a growing Ecosystem and providing a growing marketplace of solutions, not products, to the challenges od making a step change within the industrial digital transformation
Disclaimer: This article is published in partnership with Siemens. Siemens is paying for my engagement, not for promotional purposes. Opinions are my own.
In twenty-odd minutes, Thomas Kiessling outlined to an audience of knowledgeable Energy experts his seven points to help prepare an energy company to make a transforming change.
By using specific examples of the needs in Electricity and the Grid Edge to underline the changes needed to be undertaken, he “fleshed out” these seven steps by recognizing all the seven do need to be embraced collectively.
Thomas Kiessling is the CTO of Siemens Smart Infrastructure, and within his keynote at the Enlit Europe event, held in Milan between 30th November to 2nd December 2021, provided seven needs for transitional change to prepare any energy company “As all of us will go through disruption and opportunity.”.
Kiessling said the industry “has entered a much greater degree of uncertainty. And uncertainty needs entrepreneurs; it needs trial and error, and it needs system-scale innovation.” Continue reading →
Siemens Smart Infrastructure offers many different solutions to achieving this change at the energy grid edge. Recently, to amplify this, they have been holding a conference over two days entitled “the grid edge summit“.
You can still register here as the event is available for some time to view and explore. It would help in understanding their solutions if you visited their different energy topic areas. Here Siemens offers you a significant range of choices, solutions and advice on Grid Edge topics to give you time to check out some of the #GridEdge tech & solutions.
These topics and solutions are organized under decarbonization and sustainability, distributed energy solutions, the integration of renewable energy resources, mobility charging, and the consulting and financing solutions available to utilize. The main conference event is a series of talks and panels exploring the topics above.
One panel I particularly enjoyed was “Financing Decarbonization.”Continue reading →
I have been reading a groundbreaking report, the world’s first comprehensive study on how to achieve a“Net-Zero by 2050: a roadmap for the global energy system“(referred to as NZE here in this link). It is produced by the International Energy Agency (IEA)
Why is this so important? Well, it is about the most dramatic change in our Energy Systems globally and emphasised that this decade is pivotal to reaching the targeted goal of net-zero by mid-century. Each decade will bring dramatic change to all of our lives. Our planet is under significant threat of global warming that will impact how we can live and perhaps survive.
This 2050 target is in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement, the foundations of global consensus to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5c. This requires nothing short of a total transformation of the energy systems, a complex “beast” that provides us with the basic energy sources we need to survive, live, build and grow.
The report sets out a cost-effective and economically productive pathway, resulting in a clean, dynamic and resilient energy economy dominated by renewables like solar and wind instead of fossil fuels. The report also examines key uncertainties, such as the roles of bioenergy, carbon capture and behavioural changes in reaching net zero.
Ecosystems 4 innovating 