How IIoT and AI Changes OEM Company Value and Long-term Success

Industrial IoT adoption was already a Mega-Trend, but this is now being further accelerated as AI implementation methods are becoming more mainstream. As the convergence of IIoT and AI gains momentum, how "industrial work gets done" will transform dramatically and industrial customers will insist on harnessing this new power into their operations.

As a result, the industrial products market is now at a major inflection point that presents huge opportunities for industrial OEMs that harness this mega-trend to their advantage. Where compared side by side with similar product capabilities, the OEM that provides differentiated IIoT and AI current capabilities - and a demonstrated commitment to leadership as this market evolves - will almost always win. This kind of singular supplier selection differentiator is extremely rare, and represents a huge opportunity for OEMs that embrace this, as well as a big threat to those that do not.

However, given the multiple components and relative complexity of deploying suitably enterprise-grade IIoT / AI solutions many OEMs have been slow to fully embrace this future. However, OEMs can take meaningful yet measured incremental steps into this future to affordably move forward into this future. And from a strategic value creation perspective incremental steps should look like this:

1) First, "Smart Product" enable your product lines to provide asset IIoT data via standardized communications protocols such as MQTT. This allows your products to be easily integrated into customer IIoT and AI systems. This sets a foundation and "IIoT Enables" your business.

2) Create initial "Smart Applications" that aggregate and analyze your "Smart Product" data to provide your customers with turn-key solutions. This immediately increases your portfolio value and establishes your IIoT foundation for new applications and added depth to the first application.

3) By making it easy to integrate 3rd party devices into into your Smart Applications you can actually integrate Competitor Products into your Applications. This puts you in a powerful driver’s seat from an account control perspective with customers.

4) Emphasizing an Open Systems approach to your solutions lets you easily integrate your Smart Applications with existing Enterprise Software, dramatically increasing the usefulness of the system and building still more customer value.

At IoT83, we emphasize the importance of OEMs moving from step "1" to step "2" and beyond. Should an OEM stop at step "1", the Smart Edge data is stranded and does not provide the real value of IIoT and AI. And, other third parties (or even competitors) would actually reap the financial benefits of the OEM's Smart Edge investment as they sell solutions to integrate this data into Asset Monitoring, Remote Management, Predictive Maintenance, or other IIoT solutions. To understand this better, refer to the chart below:

With no IIoT connectivity or capabilities, given current mega-trends, an OEM's product value will typically decline over time. Adding Smart Edge capabilities increases the value of the portfolio, but the bigger inflection point is when Smart Edge data is integrated into Smart Applications, as this is what the industrial customer really wants - actionable insights and automations to streamline operations. Then, once this foundation is established, the OEM can move to building new Applications, to integrating Smart Applications into more system-wide Smart Solutions, to adding new layers of analytics and AI intelligence, to offering advanced Service Level Agreements, or even to offering "Hardware-as-a-Services" (HaaS). And, once the initial IIoT foundation is established adding new capabilities and services gets easier and easier.

 The key point is that the higher an OEM moves on this curve, the higher the competitive differentiation will be, and importantly, the higher the OEM's market valuation will ultimately go. And, this differentiation will only increase as the IIoT and AI Convergence gains more traction in industrial OEM markets. On the other hand, the lower an OEM is on this curve, the higher the potential impact of competitors can be.

While the steps to success here are simplified for brevity, it is essential to understand that in industrial settings enterprise-grade cyber security, reliability, scalability, and feature creation flexibility is essential. As a result, an OEM's IIoT foundation itself needs to meet this core industrial level of quality.

But to return to the premise of this article, as the convergence of IIoT and AI gains momentum, how "industrial work gets done" will transform dramatically. And, OEMs that outperform competitors in this area will have a singular advantage to dramatically grow market leadership, customer traction, and business valuation. This is a huge and rare opportunity.

About Us

IoT83 is a leading Application Enablement Platform company focused on industrial OEM and enterprise IIoT and AI success. Our flagship product, the OEM & Enterprise Domain Cloud (OEDC) platform streamlines the Industrial OEM’s transition into this IIoT / AI mega-trend to accelerate financial success in this dynamic future. The OEDC platform is proven to over 50M devices connected, and is proven for cyber security and industrial reliability. Our solutions have been purpose built to enable industrial OEMs to deliver IIoT and AI value quickly, but also to deliver long-term strategic value. And, through our customer engagement process, we closely work with our customers to get straight to the heart of what they and their customers need, and to deliver impactful results fast and efficiently.

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