Edge and cloud data integration is becoming essential for modern manufacturing, enabling more adaptive production through advanced technologies. Siemens and Microsoft are expanding their collaboration within the Siemens Xcelerator platform to simplify the integration of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) for enterprise customers. This partnership aims to streamline data flow from production lines to the edge and the cloud, supporting AI and digital twin solutions.
Bridging the IT/OT Gap
Manufacturers have traditionally managed data in separate IT and OT environments. Siemens Industrial Edge, in conjunction with Microsoft Azure IoT Operations, offers a solution to this challenge, helping manufacturers connect industrial assets to Microsoft Azure. This integration allows for continuous data flow, essential for implementing AI and digital twin solutions that improve machine performance, product quality, and maintenance.
With Siemens Industrial Edge, manufacturers can deploy and manage applications within a factory environment. Connectivity applications deployed to Siemens Industrial Edge devices provide a continuous flow of data to Azure IoT Operations. As part of Microsoft’s adaptive cloud approach, Azure IoT Operations connects on-premises industrial edge solutions with the cloud.
Seamless Data Flow
By combining Siemens Industrial Edge with Microsoft’s cloud and AI services, a seamless data flow from production lines to the edge and cloud is achieved. The OT data plane, provided by Siemens Industrial Edge, integrates with Azure IoT Operations to establish an interoperable OT and IT data plane for manufacturing. This data layer is crucial for mission-critical production applications such as virtualized control, low-latency closed-loop AI, and executable digital twins, which allow manufacturers to optimize operations, reduce costs, and enhance uptime and quality.
By using Azure IoT Operations, industrial producers may leverage this OT data in cloud-based, data-driven use cases. This in turn enables production optimization across multiple sites, as well as valuable insights derived from advanced analytics. Siemens Industrial Edge presents a unified and scalable control plane for important OT workloads, allowing customers to centrally deploy and manage production-level use cases at scale, while Azure gives a unified control plane for IT workloads in the cloud and on-premises. This hybrid approach allows users to deploy and manage workloads efficiently, focusing on real outcome, such as harnessing data and technologies like AI and digital twins to streamline production and make it more adaptable.
Key Benefits
The collaboration between Siemens and Microsoft also utilizes Siemens Industrial AI portfolio and Azure Machine Learning. This enables manufacturers to train AI models in the cloud and run them at the edge to improve product quality and decrease manual rework. In addition, the combined approach enables the creation of digital twins to optimize equipment efficiency and leverage live production data with generative AI to support training and operations. Siemens Industrial Copilot for Operations offers support to operators through natural language queries for troubleshooting and machine insights.
