Software developer Bentley Systems and electronics giant Siemens have announced a strategic alliance agreement to drive new business value by accelerating digitalisation.
The companies will initially invest at least £43m in developing joint solutions to enlarge their respective offerings for infrastructure. The work aims to leverage new cloud services for a connected data environment to converge respective digital engineering models from both companies.
Siemens and Bentley Systems have a track record of complementing their respective portfolios through the licensing of each other’s technology. For example, Bentley’s reality modelling software has been integrated into Siemens’ Process Simulate to leverage laser-scanned point clouds in modelling the existing context of brownfield industrial environments.
The new investment initiatives will involve virtually all Siemens divisions. The major benefit will be accumulating intelligence from Siemens solutions throughout Bentley’s complementary applications for design modelling, analytical modelling, construction modelling and asset performance modelling.
As a result, the integrated and accessible digital engineering models, such as the “digital twin” viewed through an immersive 3D interface, will enable unprecedented operational performance, visibility and reliability.
This work will uniquely converge digital engineering models: physical engineering models in their 3D physical reality context by way of Bentley’s software solutions and the corresponding functional engineering 2D models within Siemens’ solutions.
Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley said: “Only with Siemens could we so purposefully advance beyond merely linking the ‘Industrial Internet of Things’ to ultimately leverage digital engineering models for visual operations and connected infrastructure asset performance.
“Given our long history of sharing complementary technologies, we are very excited to now contribute so broadly to Siemens’ industrial digitalisation leadership.”
Earlier this month Bentley’s annual conference, The Year in Infrastructure, took place in London at which the Be Inspired Awards finalists and winners were announced.
Main image: Nils Ackermann/Dreamstime.com
Only with Siemens could we so purposefully advance beyond merely linking the ‘Industrial Internet of Things’ to ultimately leverage digital engineering models for visual operations and connected infrastructure asset performance.– Greg Bentley, Bentley Systems
