The technologies that have already revolutionized the media, financial services and retail are now being applied to utilities, industry and transport & infrastructure.
Today, there are already around seven billion devices connected to the industrial internet; by 2020, it’s estimated that there will be more than 26 billion. Gathering and analyzing that data is one challenge; a greater one is putting the data to productive use. That requires expertise in both the digital and industrial realms, as well as a proven track record and trust with industrial customers.
Trust is essential in the digital economy since in industrial digitalization, companies not only share valuable data with partners and suppliers, they also may provide access to their most business-critical systems. In such circumstances, you need to trust that your assets are in safe, experienced and capable hands.
This is how ABB differentiates itself in the market. As masters of the industrial control room, with an installed base of more than 70 million connected devices, 70,000 digital control systems and 6,000 enterprise software solutions, we unlock value with domain expertise and digital solutions. For more than four decades, our customers have trusted ABB to manage the operations and health of their assets and to continuously optimize their performance.
Building on that track record, we are now accelerating the way we deliver new digital solutions to our customers with ABB Ability, our group-wide portfolio of digital solutions. ABB Ability is unique because it applies ABB’s unrivaled know-how from its installed base – one of the largest in the world – to the huge amounts of data gathered from our customers’ operations. The result: our customers improve safety and efficiency, increase productivity and extend the lifecycles of their assets.
Currently, ABB Ability, which was commercially launched in Houston this week, encompasses more than 180 digital offerings, ranging from our comprehensive asset health center for asset-intensive industries, to solutions for the remote monitoring of robots, motors and machinery, to control systems for process industry and all manner of installations and infrastructure from buildings to electric-vehicle charging networks to factories and offshore platforms. More specialized offerings include energy management solutions for data centers and navigation optimization for maritime shipping fleets, among many others.
As ABB’s digital offering for utilities, industry and transport & infrastructure customers, ABB Ability is designed to grow and expand in an open, collaborative way. We have formed a strategic partnership with Microsoft to develop next-generation digital solutions based on its Azure cloud platform. Going forward, we will build our applications on Azure, taking advantage of all of its capabilities as the largest and most advanced cloud platform, while adding value with ABB’s domain-specific solutions.
For our customers, this will mean access to an expanding array of digital solutions and services that provide better oversight and control of assets, reduce energy consumption and costs, while increasing efficiency, safety and productivity. With ABB Ability, we are undertaking a transformational journey with our customers for the long-term. They will know more, do more, operate better – together.