On October 2014, CEO of General Electric, Jeff Immelt, kicked off GE’s Minds+Machines conference with this statement:
You went to bed last night as an industrial company. You will wake up in the morning as a software and analytics company.
So what would make the CEO of an industrial equipment giant say this? In addition to their wide range of product offerings, GE is quickly becoming a software and analytics company that is stretching the definition of what a product is and how they can improve their customer’s outcomes with that newly defined product. In the new age of IoT (Internet of Things), your industrial equipment organization can benefit by taking GE’s lead in developing smart services that support your products.
The Data is Out There, Capture It!
A single GE jet engine collects 1 terabyte of data on a cross-Atlantic flight, and 1 gas turbine compressor blade monitoring potential of 500 gigabytes per day. In turn, that data collection gives them an opportunity to create new service offers.
GE is not alone in the data that they are collecting. It has been estimated that in the history of the world up until 2003, there have been 2.3 exabytes of data collected. Even more staggering, IDC and EMC estimate that by 2020 we will have collected over 40,000 exabytes. To put it into perspective, 1 exabyte is the equivalent to the entire Netflix catalogue streamed more than 3,000 times. That’s a lot of data!
What Are Companies Doing With This Electronic Data?
If you sell technical assets today, commoditization is draining your economic moat. Many of the tactics employed today to refill that moat revolve around effective data capture and using that data to improve customer outcomes. While beneficial, the capture and analysis of this data will force you to rethink many aspects of your business. In order to help you navigate this transformation, TSIA has developed a framework that we call the “Remote Services Continuum.”
The Remote Services Continuum
There is no doubt that smart, connected products are going to transform the industrial equipment marketplace, but before we get too far, let’s start with what a “smart, connected product” means:
A product is some type of electro-mechanical device.
This product becomes smart when some type of sensor technology is applied that enables a company to capture a digital representation of performance, status or usage.
Then these products are connected enabling companies to communicate with the product.
So, how are companies using smart, connected products today? The best way to describe it is to take a journey along the Remote Services Continuum, which can be divided into three main steps.