DRIVING INDUSTRIAL

DRIVING INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION

AVEVA, a global leader in engineering and industrial software, focuses on solutions that help drive digital transformation in various industrial sectors. Dr Tariq Aslam, Head of MEA, AVEVA shares more details of their solutions

Elaborate on AVEVA's solutions that help drive digital transformation?

AVEVA provides innovative industrial software to transform complex industries such as Oil & Gas, Construction, Engineering, Marine, and Utilities to name some. Our software solutions and platform enable the design and management of complex industrial assets like power plants, chemical plants, water treatment facilities and food and beverage manufacturers – deploying IIoT, Cloud, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to digitally transform industries.

When it comes to advancing industries in changing times, performance insights that are faster, deeper and more accurate are key to building a sustainable future. By leveraging the most precise, optimized performance insights – organizations can reduce maintenance costs, improve on productivity, efficiency, safety, and sustainability.

We are the first company in the engineering and industrial software market to comprehensively address the end-toend digital transformation imperatives with an integrated portfolio of solutions that deliver efficiency, unlock value and empower people across the lifecycle of capital assets and operational value chains. AVEVA enables companies to realize capital project efficiency, edge to enterprise visualization, optimized value chains, safe and reliable operations, and a workforce enabled and empowered with rich information and decision support.

Cloud is critical right now and we are working across our customers to expedite their use of the technology. New technologies like AI enable four key areas to mitigate business and operational risk, improve workforce safety and efficiency, and forge a more reliable and secure enterprise - the four Ps: Predictive, Performance, Prescriptive and Prognostic.

What makes AVEVA unique is our full portfolio of products cover not only Operations of an asset and system but also the CAPEX side, or Engineering – in which we are currently developing new AI/ML modules to help our customers make better design decisions. To further this point, we believe most all of our products will be “AI-Infused” at some point in the near future as we are seeing high customer value in applying this technology across our portfolio.

How critical is the use of digital twins in managing digital transformation journeys in the industrial sector? Discuss from AVEVA's offerings point of view

Digital twin technology is increasingly being deployed by organizations as part of their digital transformation journey. It presents an opportunity to find new ways of working and rethink how people collaborate and engage with these information models to create value for the business – and not view digital twins as simply as automating the current way of doing business.

Digital twins provide the ability to create a virtual replica of potential and actual physical assets, processes, people, places, systems and devices that can be used for various purposes. Organizations use the technology for many reasons including testing new assets or procedures before launching them in the real world, where it becomes more expensive and complicated to fix any issues, the improvement of ongoing operations or training employees. In practical terms, this type of technology can help improve the safety on an oil rig, improve the efficiency of a production plant, or ensuring buildings meet sustainability, efficiency or regulatory requirements. Dr Tariq Aslam Head of MEA, AVEVA

More importantly, a digital twin can help predict potential failures before they happen and suggest ways to prevent those failures. Knowing the current state of an asset, the digital model can use predictive learning technology to proactively identify potential asset failures before they occur and even suggest ways to prevent those failures. In other words, the digital twin can predict when its physical counterpart will break, well before that happens.

AVEVA offers the industries’ only comprehensive trusted digital twin, fully integrating the entire value chain from asset creation to operations delivered in real-time. By leveraging data that is created at every stage of the lifecycle, from design and build to operations and maintenance, organizations can gain a more innovative way of working.

Which are the industrial sectors of focus for AVEVA?

AVEVA works with customers in the energy, manufacturing, infrastructure, power & utilities, chemicals, mining and marine industries to name some across the globe. Some of the biggest names in the Oil and Gas, food and beverages, water and mining industries in the Middle East and Africa are our clients. Smart Cities is also a huge focus for us in the region.

How do you see capital intensive industries benefiting from cloud-based transformation? In this context discuss your recent extended partnership with Microsoft around its Azure

cloud services

True digital transformation platforms provide the ability to choose between deployment options including on premise, cloud or hybrid rollouts especially given the complexities of today’s challenging macro-economic environment. Agility in procurement options allows industrial organizations to obtain the required tools through several options, including perpetual licensing or subscription-based services solutions for implementing technology on an as needed, staged approach, which helps the organization reduce upfront costs and decrease time to value of new technology investments while accelerating a path toward increased profitability.

AVEVA recently introduced a ‘CloudFirst’ approach, which is a key component of our long-term software portfolio strategy to focus on providing core services in the cloud to ensure high uptime and availability, user management and the flexibility to try new solutions. We are also working with Microsoft to help customers explore new ways to leverage the value of cloud technologies as well as Azure AI, Azure Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics.

We recently extended our long-standing strategic collaboration with Microsoft to help maximize the value that customers can derive from the integration of AVEVA’s portfolio with Microsoft cloud services and especially Microsoft Azure (infrastructure, data and AI services), helping them achieve implementations quicker, connect teams more readily and drive growth opportunities throughout their integrated portfolio. Our key focus areas revolve around cloud as well as transforming the workforce (connected worker), and building a common Asset Strategy (Asset Performance Management). Working with Microsoft, we will continue to focus on three key areas - platform integration, a multi-solution engagement approach, and a shared go-to-market strategy. The platform integration approach can help generate new ways to increase business value for customers.

deployments in the industrial sectors of the region?

The IIoT, or Industrial Internet of Things, represents a new way to bring data from previously inaccessible data streams into a more complete view of a business. The Internet of Things generally refers to devices which were historically not connected to the internet, but now are – for example wearables, smart TVs, and security cameras. IIoT specifically refers to industrial devices that are now equipped with the capabilities to send data to HMI and SCADA systems or the cloud. These smart devices may include things like connected sensors, valves, switches, or field devices that connect to the network.

Since IIoT offers organizations a powerful framework for operational continuity, we are seeing an increased uptake in the region. IIoT offers innovative ways to monitor and manage objects in the physical world, particularly as huge streams of data offer organizations better avenues for decision making, with benefits such as more uptime, more efficiency and a more engaged and empowered workforce. This possible due to the access they have to a unified stream of insightful intelligence, at a time when it’s never been more important to contextualize data and information that drive actionable insights.

"IIOT OFFERS INNOVATIVE WAYS TO MONITOR AND MANAGE OBJECTS IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD, PARTICULARLY AS HUGE STREAMS OF DATA OFFER ORGANIZATIONS BETTER AVENUES FOR DECISION MAKING, WITH BENEFITS SUCH AS MORE UPTIME, MORE EFFICIENCY AND A MORE ENGAGED AND EMPOWERED WORKFORCE"

The barriers to adopting IIoT technology have fallen dramatically in the past decade. Historical challenges to implementing IIoT solutions included expensive components to add network connectivity, difficulty aggregating data from disparate data streams, and lack of a centralized dashboard.

The use of IIoT through real-time online monitoring and analytics has had a profound impact by improving response times to potential issues and minimizing possible damage to the environment, which has ultimately resulted in the avoidance of costly unscheduled shutdowns, while improving profits. IIoT has made a vast difference to the efficiency of the industry and is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Discuss AVEVA's go to market strategies in brief. What kind of channel or partners do you work with?

AVEVA has a robust presence in the MEA region with a strong team of professionals including technical experts and a growing channel partner network of some of the reputed distributors, systems integrators, value-added resellers, and industry specialists. Through our technology, we are empowering industry to achieve more efficiency and drive towards higher productivity. Over time, we want our software to help our Middle East customers work towards a more sustainable future. This mindset is shared by our team, and it is why we are committed to supporting industrial transformation, enabling our customers to realize a better future and our planet to thrive.

With over 5,000 members globally, AVEVA’s Partner and Channel Network is one of the most active and supportive global networks in the industrial and manufacturing sector. In 2021, we will continue to strengthen our MEA channel network by appointing new partners, who are established in their respective domains. Through AVEVA Select, our new partner program, we plan to grow our partner network from strength to strength by offering real value and enabling our network members to work better together to help their customers create increased business value.