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Industry Cloud Solutions: The Next Frontier in Technology
Industry Cloud Solutions: The Next Frontier in Technology

September 25, 2024

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The world is different today. The pace of digital transformation over the past few years has been dramatic and unprecedented, owing to the advancement in technologies such as robotics, AI/ML, AR/VR etc. Companies in every industry have scrambled to leverage these technologies to accelerate their digital transformation journey, provide more and better options for remote work, remote inspections and monitoring, and increased automation – all at very large scale, the world over. 

Cloud providers have mastered the traditional ‘lift and shift’, where enterprise data can be seamlessly migrated to the cloud, and that too in a short time and with minimum risk. But “lift and shift” isn’t as straightforward for industrial data, where there are serious issues with processing and data access latency, OT data security, data governance, visibility, accessibility and control, the possible need for edge computing, business rules, and much more to contend with.  

The nuances of industrial data and the capabilities needed to handle it, govern and catalogue it, contextualize it, process it, and finally derive insights, visualize and share results are making this a big opportunity for both cloud and industry solution providers.  

Why Industry Clouds:

The popularity of industry clouds is easy to understand. Industry clouds come ready with verticalized, repeatable industry capabilities that include tools, applications, cloud software services and customized industry templates and workflows optimized for the key use cases of a specific industry.  

Industry cloud solutions are over a composable, repeatable and scalable architecture stack.  

 Industry clouds are designed to: 

  • Reduce time to market with the ability to speed up and de-risk cloud migrations close to the edge and industrial operations. 

  • Improve quality of cloud solutions with superior, pre-built industry-specific capabilities, usually by leveraging IT and OT data management and analytics’ expertise.  

  • Simplify end-to-end orchestrations of business processes across hyperscalers, private clouds, SaaS providers and the edge.  

  • Create flexible and customizable offerings that allow customers to adopt the capabilities and modules they require.  

  • Enable industry veterans to compete with new entrants disrupting the market with cloud-native offerings.  

Specific Industry Examples 

We’re seeing highest interest in industry cloud solutions in asset-heavy verticals, such as manufacturing, mobility and energy. There are multiple use cases in each industry which can be customized based on business needs.  

Typically, the best industry clouds need to: 

  1. Provide flexibility and control across the leading set of wireless networking technologies. 

  1. Offer edge intelligence & hybrid cloud architectures for low latency & control. 

  1. Be public cloud agnostic to provide deployment & architecture flexibility without causing cloud lock-in, including on-premises or hybrid cloud options (Industry Hybrid-Cloud). 

  1. A set of foundational components shared across vertical solutions, with technical blueprints and cornerstone capabilities for reliable industrial solutions. 

  1. Horizontal services that manage and enable vertical industry solutions. 

  1. Composable microservices layer for deploying AI/ML Solution templates by segment, with pre-composed applications that provide specialized vertical solutions & business outcomes. 

For example, industry-specific capabilities in manufacturing would include smart factory solutions, worker safety and productivity, an increased focus on sustainability and carbon neutrality, improving supply chain resiliency and transforming the aftermarket experience.  

For railways, solutions address passenger security, automated rail yard management, building an operations command centre and digital signalling and advanced train control systems.  

For the energy industry, capabilities include, for example, circular battery management, building and facility energy management, grid flexibility through virtual power plants, V2G, electric vehicle mobility management and green registry, carbon traceability and trading.  

Case Study : Manufacturing Cloud: Improving Visibility and Productivity Across the Value Chain 

In the recent years, manufacturers have made a lot of investments into technologies like IoT, data-driven visualization, machine learning, AI and automation. A manufacturing cloud focuses on improving operations across the value chain while reducing cost, starting from improving supply chain resiliency to transforming the aftermarket experience.  

A manufacturing cloud can help a manufacturer of metal sheeting with practical options to transform their operations into a smart factory and adopt autonomous and optimized factory operations. The industry cloud option they adopt can use pre-built information and domain asset models, asset registries, factory simulators and digital twins to provide asset monitoring, visualization across IT-OT systems, management and predictive maintenance and machine synchronization for autonomous operations.  

Key Considerations:

What are some of the important factors to consider carefully before adopting an industry cloud or manufacturing cloud? Clearly, moving critical operational data from a production or shop floor to a different location comes with risks and potential for complications.  

The most important ones have to do with latency, access and control, governance, and security issues. There are real-life, practical considerations that need to be addressed when creating a curated data warehouse in the cloud, such as firewall and data access issues. Solutions must be designed such that they mitigate loss of data control and access issues for shop floor personnel. Lack of OT data visibility, real-time control and access can become a major problem for those in a manufacturing practice that need to preserve that critical data access and control and has the potential to bring a digital transformation exercise to stand-still.  

About the Author: 

Anitha Rao Gadiyar heads the go-to-market function and manages key strategic programs as part of the Industry 4.0 practice in Hitachi Digital Services. Anitha has around 17 years of industry experience and holds a post-graduate diploma in management from the Institute for Financial Management & Research (IFMR) and a bachelor’s degree in technology from Anna University. She is based in Chennai, India. She can be reached at Anitha.RaoGadiyar@hitachids.com | in.linkedin.com/in/anitharaogadiyar | @ARaoGadiyar 


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Hitachi Digital Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., is an edge-to-core digital consultancy and technology services provider helping organizations realize the full potential of AI-driven digital transformation. Through a technology-unified operating model for cloud, data and IoT, Hitachi Digital Services' end-to-end value creation for clients is established through innovation in digital engineering, implementation services, products, and solutions. Built on Hitachi Group's more than 110 years of innovation across industries, Hitachi Digital Services helps to improve people's lives today and build a sustainable society tomorrow. To learn more, visit https://hitachids.com.

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