Mr. Röck, when and why is the 'Mindsphere Connector' necessary? Why not play the data directly in 'Mindsphere'?

Andreas Röck: Its use covers two use cases: Firstly, it makes it possible to connect other data sources - such as controllers - that are not directly supported by Mindsphere. Another use case is to support users who do not want to connect Mindsphere directly to production, for example because they have security concerns. In this case, the use of middleware allows a detailed selection of the data that is transferred to the cloud.

To what extent is the range of control systems increased?

Andreas Röck: The architecture of Mindsphere is primarily aimed at connecting controllers via the OPC UA standard. However, the majority of controllers in use today do not yet support this standard. This applies in particular to controllers that are installed in existing systems. With the Connector, these controllers can also be easily and securely integrated into Mindsphere applications.

How exactly is the connector used in practice?

Andreas Röck: Various cloud applications run in Mindsphere, which evaluate the collected data for predictive maintenance or plant efficiency, for example. The first step is to transfer this data to the Mindsphere environment. Our connector is a convenient option for this. This is because the user can use trigger conditions to define very flexibly which individual data points from the different data sources or controllers are available for evaluation in Mindsphere at which times.

Are connectors to other platforms planned?

Andreas Röck: The most important platforms can be integrated via standard protocols such as MQTT. An MQTT connector is already available in our dataFEED OPC Suite for this purpose. This allows Adamos, for example, to access production data. If this path is not available, we can also integrate the corresponding platform API, as we have done with the Mindsphere connector.

What is the advantage of the Softing solution?

Andreas Röck: With our suite, customers have access to the controllers of the leading manufacturers, including Simatic S5, as a data source. And for further use of the data, this solution not only supports Siemens Mindsphere, but also a number of other important cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Bosch PPM, Amazon AWS and many more.