Siemens has founded an industrial IoT (IIoT) group of manufacturing and technology companies in Italy to expand the international reach of its MindSphere platform.
The new MindSphere World Italy set-up follows a similar industrial grouping in Siemens home market, Germany. The Italian division will also promote MindSphere in France, Spain and Portugal, said Siemens. In total, 17 partners have joined the programme.
MindSphere is an open, cloud-based IoT operating system, which enables industrial data to be collected and analysed, and rendered as valuable.
The association was established in Germany in January to expand the MindSphere footprint by promoting a global ‘ecosystem’ of users, and offering developer support for IIoT applications. It also seeks to make standardise rules for data utilisation.
Giuliano Busetto, country division lead for digital factory at Siemens Italy, has been appointed as chair of MindSphere World in Italy. Busetto said the Italian set-up represents “another key milestone” to build an ‘ecosystem’ around the MindSphere platform.
“It also underpins the strategic importance of the Italian market to Siemens in the industrial sector, both in the manufacturing and in the process industries, and the role played by Siemens and the industrial divisions in Italy within the global context,” he said.
Busetto highlighted the presence of universities, industrial partners, innovative startups as well as machine building partners in the Italian group; each wants to increase its “competitiveness and technological innovations” in their markets, he said.
Andrea Gozzi, business development manager for industrial software in the digital factory division at Siemens Italy, has been appointed as secretary general for MindSphere World Italy.
Gozzi said: “By creating a regional community made up of companies of all sizes from the fields of IT and manufacturing, which play an overarching role across different industries, our aim is to provide a concrete basis from which to drive forward the MindSphere-based ecosystem.”
The founder members of MindSphere World Italy are Buffoli Transfer, Camozzi Digital, Crippa, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, Famar, Fondazione Politecnico di Milano, Itcore, Jobs, Mario Frigerio, Miraitek, Nordmeccanica, Pama, Rittal, Rettificatrici Ghiringhelli, Salmoiraghi, Sampsistemi, Zani, and Siemens itself.
Last week, Siemens announced a deal with the Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City Investment and Development Company, a 50/50 joint venture between Asian smart city solutions provider Ascendas-Singbridge and the Guangzhou Development District in China, to deploy and enhance its smart-city technology. It also confirmed it working with Chinese firm Alibaba to “foster” the industrial ‘internet of things’ (IIoT) market in China.
