Siemens and IBM are planning to integrate Watson technology and other analysis tools from IBM into Mindsphere. Mindsphere is Siemens' cloud-based, open operating system for the Internet of Things. The aim of the integration is to further simplify the use of data analysis functions for customers. To this end, business customers will have access to visualization functions and dashboards, while app developers and data analysts can use analytics technologies via interfaces (Application Programming Interfaces/APIs). IBM and Siemens want to bundle their respective competencies - in the area of powerful analytics technologies as well as in the automation and digitalization of industry.

Support in three areas

IBM's analytics technologies are designed to support users in three areas: Analyzing machine data helps to predict anomalies and deviating patterns and initiate countermeasures. By making production equipment "smarter", downtimes can also be reduced and plant performance increased. With quality analyses, including image and audio analyses, users can identify which circumstances contribute to process disruptions and quality problems. This allows product quality and yield to be optimized.

IBM plans to make various analytics technologies available on Mindsphere for this purpose. These range from dashboards and predictive analytics, including prescriptive analytics, to cognitive analytics. According to Siemens, cognitive analytics plays a key role in helping customers to optimize their performance. Users can read and analyze a wide variety of data from sensors. They can identify hidden correlations in large amounts of data, optimize diagnoses in the event of malfunctions and use the findings to continuously improve the production process.