在工业自动化面临的挑战中寻找机遇

23.Scalability and flexibility.There are really twodimensions to this. First, you have the market require-ment to add new, incremental, updated functionalityto your existing fielded systems. Second, you have theability to scale your system from low end to high endto address various markets. So our clients have some-times operated in silos when it comes to developingtheir products, and they’ve ended up not being able toreuse software across multiple product families.That’s a huge problem and challenge for them. As aexample, in the programmable logic controller (PLC)market, typical PLC suppliers have a range of productsscaling from low-end, low-cost — perhaps suitable forbuilding in automation — through high-end PLCs —useful in industrial use cases such as chemical plants,oil rigs, and so on. Lastly, there is also a trend to pushPLC control functionality into the cloud, onto somekind of edge cloud, which typically is installed on-prem— on a centralized server or even a mini data center inthe factory, plant, or whatever.4.Cybersecurity.There is obviously a big concern inthe process automation domain, just as in the largersociety, about cybersecurity. Protecting these auto-mated systems from cyberthreats is a significantchallenge. Earlier this spring, the European Parlia-ment put in place the Cyber Resilience Act, which willbe enforceable by 2027. This is a complex regulatoryframework aiming to enhance cybersecurity acrossthe European Union. So all clients in the process au-tomation space are probably asking themselveswhether they have a CRA-compliant story acrosstheir product portfolio.Another interesting aspect when it comes to this, andwhen it comes to security in general, is that you needto consider security by design. Security is not some-thing that you can bolt on afterward. So the whole de-velopment process needs to consider and implementvarious security measures through the entire prod-uct development cycle, including post-deploymentand lifecycle management. This includes consideringhow to deal with security fixes posed by, for example,common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs). Andthat requires an efficient way to update systems inthe field with minimal disruption to the live systems.5.Safety and compliance.In order to meet and ad-dress the aforementioned objectives and challenges,there is an increased focus on adhering to industrystandards and meeting various industry regulations.This process is pretty complex and time-consuming.Ultimately it can lead to missed market opportunities,if you’re not able to meet those industry standardsand regulations. 6.Innovation.In an increasingly competitive market,everyone needs to focus their scarce resources onvalue-add product development. And to my previouspoint, on offering flexibility, there is a need to imple-ment an approach that allows for innovation through-out the entire lifecycle of the system.Even the systems, devices, and products that have al-ready been fielded need to be considered. I talked toone of our customers recently who brought up twomain drivers: One was improving R&D efficiency, andthe other was to increase developer velocity. They ob-viously go hand in hand. This customer claimed thatcompanies that have been able to put in place higherdeveloper velocity have shown that they can growrevenue four to five times faster than the competi-tion. That’s obviously huge.How can that happen? Well, they hit the marketmuch faster, and they were able to improve innova-tion by 50%. So a great developer experience meansthat teams can deliver business value — much morebusiness value — by spending less time on internalprocesses and more time on building out capabilitiesfor their customers.The key to making that happen is to have a clearand secure path of deploying high-quality softwaredirectly to your end customers. TRENDS OF INTERESTOne obvious trend that everyone across society is talking about right now is AI.The vertical process automation industry is no different.Now, I talked earlier about startups and scale-ups challenging the big incumbentsof this market. There are tons of these startups, and they’re developing all theseAI-based solutions to optimize things like production, to prevent anomalies andreduce human intervention.And I said that these startups and scale-ups naturally put a lot of pressure on themarket leaders. Just to give you an idea of what’s going on in the market when itpertains to innovation, let’s look at computer vision. That’s something that a lot ofthese process automation companies are putting effort into: being aware of thesurroundings and the environment, object recognition, temperature monitoring.Another thing is obviously preventive maintenance, being able to fix the problembefore it happens. That can save a lot of money.Yet another interesting trend we see is cobots. Those traditional long lines ofrobots on the factory floor are not only what we’re looking at; the factory floor oftoday includes humans and robots, so-called c