VIEWPOINT
OUR BRAVE NEW NORMAL CRAIG HAYMAN, CEO OF AVEVA, ON HOW AI AND CLOUD WILL DRIVE SUCCESS IN THE POST-COVID19 WORLD
I
n the past two months, we have found ourselves in a brave new world of remote working, digitalled interactions, and increased uncertainty. At AVEVA, it’s our mission to help teams seize the opportunities this environment brings, striving to protect lives and livelihoods for the companies and communities we serve. As a company specialising in digital transformation, we have pivoted to digital-first working practices for our own team and to support our customers. But success in a post-COVID-19 world will be about more than connecting your workforce and shifting to IIOTenabled operating models. It will be about thinking differently, both in terms of scale and how we approach business challenges. And here, there are two transformative opportunities which we believe will shape a sustainable future for 16
CXO INSIGHT ME
AUGUST 2020
the industries we serve, and the world around us. These are: cloud and artificial intelligence, known as AI. How do cloud and AI change the game? Let’s start with AI. It’s been around for more than 30 years, and it’s becoming broader and more sophisticated. This is important, because it enables companies to accelerate how they work. With unified smart analytics that span complete data stacks, teams can leverage mathematical thought processes across all their activities. This gives individuals scale and capacity that they would not otherwise have – knowledge, data-led intelligence, the ability to spot opportunities. It enables people to make better decisions – and to use smart systems to recommend courses of action – that enhance the capabilities of the human workforce. At AVEVA, we use our broad portfolio
to infuse AI across all aspects of the value chain, making it smarter. We’ve been doing this for 15 years in the maintenance and asset performance space with predictive analytics. Now using the cloud, we can integrate individual products, connecting AI modules together into a broader intelligence. With integrated systems comes integrated analysis – this enables companies to generate more complex insights and recommendations for their human workforce, meaning teams can manage more complex processes, and execute them quicker. Cloud is the glue and AI the intelligence that underpins better decision-making. Two examples of how this works in practice: Duke Energy & ENEL Duke Energy uses AI on rotating and non-rotating equipment and achieved
