Nord Drivesystems is now offering Industry 4.0-oriented machine builders and plant manufacturers solutions for providing drive status data in real time via a cloud. In principle, all drive axes can be monitored worldwide via an internet connection. The concept was tested in practice at the company's application test center in a networked drive setup based on standard interfaces and components. The frequency inverters and motor starters are controlled via Profinet. They send the status data in UDP packets on the bus line without affecting the control communication. The drives send data about their current consumption, speed and voltage as well as the status word, tunneled through a Siemens PLC, to an IoT gateway and into the cloud. The status data can be evaluated for energy management and remote maintenance. Overload and error states can be visualized. Other application data - such as data from the connected sensors and actuators - can also be fed into the cloud at any time. In addition, further values can be derived from the status data, in particular the current oil temperatures. The resulting determination of oil ageing can be used for predictive maintenance.