Simplifying the IoT Puzzle with SAP Asset Performance Management and Cumulocity IoT

Following up from my previous blog on SAP Asset Performance Management (APM) and SAP IoT, I’d like to share some additional thoughts about IoT and APM, because we see such a diverse range of different customer situations. While some customers have started rationalising on a preferred ‘strategic’ IoT platform, others have a range of IoT tools, and many have inherited extensive  applications and historians which will remain valuable data sources.  In almost all customers we see  a mix of these scenarios, and no ‘one platform’ nirvana.  Therefore, I’d like to reiterate how important it is for APM to provide robust IoT capabilities as well as a flexible integration framework to simplify this IoT puzzle.

As we see our customers continue to rationalize their IT/OT platforms and shift to a more outcome based approach, our APM IoT strategy will continue to be agnostic and be able to ingest equipment/sensor data from any data source or end point: smart or IoT devices/edge gateways, data historians and data lakes, and other IoT/OT platforms or middleware.   Furthermore, APM offers standard integrations with SAP S/4HANA and ECC Plant Maintenance and it can blend maintenance records and inspection data and measuring documents along with sensor timeseries data to provide a complete view of the asset health for condition-based maintenance (CBM) and predictive maintenance (PdM).   Some of CBM/PdM connectivity use cases that we have seen in our customer’s project include:

• Oil & gas customers with data historians and data lake via REST APIs
• Utilities customers with SCADA systems via OPC UA
• Transportation customer with connected assets via MQTT and edge
• Industrial manufacturing customers with shopfloor systems via Plant Connectivity (PCo)

You might have seen this press release from Software AG announcing that they are with working us on integration with SAP Asset Performance Management.   This relationship is a great example of our strategy at work – integration with their market-leading Cumulocity IoT will help our joint, existing and new, customers to simplify their IoT connectivity scenarios and focus on leveraging their IoT data to optimize their maintenance plans and activities.

We also see this relationship opening the door for more innovative use cases such as servitization.  As our equipment manufacturing customers start to roll out as-a-service business models, Cumulocity IoT and SAP Asset Performance Management can help ensure the smart equipment/product is always working and optimize the maintenance schedules based on actual usage and health conditions.

Please watch this space and we will have more IoT-related news later this year.  To learn more about SAP Asset Performance Management, please visit sap.com/apm and check out my latest APM Overview webinar here.