How developers can deliver digital twin solutions to resolve infrastructure challenges

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SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Frost & Sullivan’s latest white paper, An Open Platform for Infrastructure Digital Twins, aims to educate independent software vendors (ISVs) and engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) companies on the value of an open digital twin platform.

It also examines the main challenges facing this industry and how the enabling technology addresses them, highlighting key experiences and outcomes achieved by technology developers.

An open, vendor-agnostic platform enables organizations to access digital twins, which are up-to-date virtual representations of their assets. Digital twins provide the ability to derive insights, improve collaboration, view real-time interactions, and improve decision-making from anywhere. Many software vendors and engineering firms are interested in building digital twin solutions but quickly face two options: invest in developing their digital twin technology—an effort that can take years to build, deploy, scale, and maintain—or use an open platform that can quickly bring digital twin solutions to market while reducing risk and avoiding vendor lock-in.

“There is a clear market requirement for well-developed, open platforms to create digital twins and digital twin applications for infrastructure,” said Seth Cutler, Principal Consultant, Energy & Environment Practice at Frost & Sullivan in a statement. “This type of platform can limit the risk for developers by delivering a pre-made foundation that can be built on, incorporating relevant data and systems important to the task at hand. Openness can aid interoperability and longevity, and ensure that various systems, such as engineering design data, business systems data, IoT data, and asset data, can be used together seamlessly over the life of an asset.”

The Bentley iTwin platform provides an open foundation for the developer ecosystem to create solutions and applications powered by iTwins for modeling, simulation, project delivery, asset performance, and much more. ISVs can create applications to generate revenue, engineers can standardize digital data formats for project workflow efficiency, and systems integrators can create digital twin solutions for asset owners.

“Over the past five years, we have worked with engineering firms and owner-operators across all facets of infrastructure as they begin to weave digital twins into their day-to-day workflows. We have been blown away by some of the ways that these firms have been able to reduce costs and optimize their work with digital twins,” said Adam Klatzkin, Vice President of iTwin Platform, Bentley Systems. “While Bentley has created digital twin solutions to meet some of these needs, the demand for digital twins is too large for any one vendor to address. It would not be possible for us to create solutions that meet the diverse range of needs across all infrastructure facets. So we focus on providing an open, vendor-agnostic platform that allows for a diverse ecosystem of digital twin providers to create solutions that can help address this broad and growing market.”

The iTwin Platform offers clients a range of benefits:

• Synchronization brings data together as a single pane of glass, combining disparate data into a federated environment that reflects current conditions for inspections, reporting, and insights.
• Build and manage very large digital twins such as stadiums, highways, and offshore oil refineries.
• Access anytime, anywhere via robust cloud infrastructure with data centers around the world. All IT infrastructures are instant-on and handled for the developer so they can focus on developing around their core competencies.
• Enterprise-grade security enables users to experience uninterrupted services and be assured that their data and systems are protected.