The News: NVIDIA and Siemens launched a new industrial metaverse partnership to envision, develop, and enable a broad industrial metaverse, while also bolstering AI-powered digital twin technologies for industrial customers. The partnership aims to empower the industrial metaverse by connecting NVIDIA Omniverse with Siemens Xcelerator platform to provide customers with new industrial metaverse opportunities and capabilities. Read the full Press Release from NVIDIA and Siemens.
NVIDIA, Siemens Partner to Target the Industrial Metaverse
Analyst Take: This NVIDIA and Siemens industrial metaverse and digital twin partnership might be the most intriguing technology news so far in the summer of 2022. This partnership brings together two of the powerhouses in these fields – NVIDIA’s broad Omniverse AI-enabled, industrial-scale virtual world engine with the open digital business Siemens Xcelerator platform and ecosystem, which provides customers with a curated portfolio of IoT-connected hardware and software to build the systems and products they are envisioning.
By combining and connecting their technologies, Siemens and NVIDIA aim to create and enable a real-time, immersive metaverse that connects hardware and software from the edge to the cloud, giving industrial manufacturers broad new capabilities they may not even yet envision. That is what makes this such an important initiative and partnership, because the possibilities it will unleash are immense.
Both Siemens and NVIDIA already offer digital twin technologies and capabilities, with Siemens being in the segment for more than a decade and NVIDIA establishing its own business in the digital twin market over the last few years. Through this new partnership, the two companies will also expand their use of digital twin technologies for customers, while boosting speed and efficiency to solve design, production, and operational challenges.
For NVIDIA, the new partnership will open NVIDIA’s Omniverse and AI ecosystem to a wide range of industrial automation products, services, and capabilities from Siemens, including its mechanical, electrical, software, IoT, and edge products and expertise.
I could not be more excited about this partnership. While I have previously written that I may not yet fully buy into the value of the broader metaverse for business use, the ultimate success of this partnership could convince me in the future that I am missing the bigger picture here.
On digital twins, I am already a big believer in this technology for almost every kind of industrial and business use. Digital twins, which are the creation of a virtual, digital representation of a factory floor, a production process, a building structure, a product – virtually anything – allow manufacturers to dream big digitally without having to spend a dime on a physical model or product sample, giving them huge latitude to explore new ideas through the keystrokes of developers.
This fresh sheet of paper approach, without the costly expenses of creating physical models or examples, gives industrial manufacturers of all kinds the ability to evaluate ideas quickly and see comparatively immediate results.
Using NVIDIA Omniverse and Siemens’ Xcelerator together as part of broader industrial metaverse strategies, industrial manufacturers will gain useful new capabilities due to the combined powers of the two platforms.
What It Means for Industrial Manufacturers
This could not come at a better time for industrial manufacturers, which are already saddled by global supply shortages and delays, inflationary pressures, the lingering Covid-19 pandemic, effects of the war in Ukraine, and other global issues that are straining the makers of a wide variety of products.
Through this NVIDIA and Siemens partnership, industrial manufacturers will gain digital tools and processes that will allow them to imagine, test, and develop immersive experiences with their products, from design through operation, all conducted virtually as part of the industrial metaverse and digital twins.
Through this industrial metaverse partnership, industrial manufacturers could easily gain some of the most valuable new capabilities they have ever had, echoing back to the groundbreaking introductions of factory assembly lines, just-in-time deliveries and robotic automation in the past.
It will be interesting to watch the industrial metaverse efforts of NVIDIA and Siemens as the partnership gets under way and gathers steam. This is going to be quite a ride for industrial manufacturers as they discover new tools and processes that will likely have huge positive impacts on their businesses.
Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.
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Image Credit: NVIDIA
Author Information
Todd joined The Futurum Group as an Analyst after over 20 years as a technology journalist covering such topic areas as artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning (DL), machine learning (ML), open source and Linux, high-performance computing, supercomputers, cloud computing, virtualization, containers and microservices, IT security and more.
Prior to his work with The Futurum Group, Todd previously served as managing editor of EnterpriseAI.news from 2020 through 2022 where he worked to drive coverage of AI use and innovation in the enterprise. He also served in the past as a staff writer for Computerworld and eWEEK and freelanced for a wide range of tech websites, including TechRepublic, Channel Futures and Channel Partners, Computerworld, PC World, Data Center Knowledge, IT Pro Today, Linux.com and The Linux Foundation.
Todd holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A Philadelphia native, he lives in Lancaster County, Pa., and spends his spare time tinkering with his vintage Mazda Miata convertible and collecting toy taxis from around the world.
