Meg Whitman, CEO of HPE: "Together with ABB, we will create an industrial future where everything is permeated by IT."

© HPE

Through the collaboration, ABB and HPE want to provide joint solutions that bring together industrial and IT technology. Cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure are combined with IT systems that run in company data centers and at the outer edges of the network - i.e. in close proximity to machines and systems. This mix of IT platforms is intended to accelerate data analysis in industrial plants and at the same time enable the control of industrial processes across locations.

"ABB and HPE will provide solutions that will span the full range of IT systems that companies need today - from the edge of the network to the cloud to the corporate data centers," explains ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer. Meg Whitman, CEO of HPE, adds: "We will equip machines with intelligence so that they can work together. We will enable plants to react flexibly to order changes and enable global supply chains to respond immediately to incidents."

The concrete plans

The partnership will include joint research and development as well as joint sales and service. Specifically, the companies want to provide digital industrial solutions that help users ...

• ... derive insights from operational data and automate processes - by running ABB Ability applications on powerful IT systems close to the machines to accelerate the processing and analysis of large amounts of data.

• ... control processes along the supply chain - by making data from industrial plants available in the cloud and in company data centers through hybrid IT solutions. The partners will enable ABB Ability applications to run on hybrid platforms such as 'HPE Proliant for Microsoft Azure Stack'. This allows users to choose where they run their applications.

ABB and HPE also plan to deliver joint data center solutions. These include:

• Data center automation - to enable the data center's power, cooling and building systems to automatically respond to changes in IT workload or incidents. To this end, ABB and HPE will integrate the ABB Ability Data Center Automation solution, which controls, monitors and optimizes data center building infrastructure, with HPE Oneview, HPE's IT infrastructure automation software.

• Secure Edge Data Center - a purpose-built data center for harsh industrial environments that brings high-performance IT systems closer to data sources and control systems. This solution is being developed by ABB and HPE together with Rittal, the world's largest manufacturer of IT enclosures, and will be a turnkey data center for industrial customers, enabling real-time analysis and control processes.