Merging the physical and digital worlds, digital twin technology has the potential to transform the enterprise.
As a result of the growing ubiquity of the Internet of Things (IoT), we’re starting to experience the impact of a true convergence of the physical and the digital worlds. Connected smoke detectors, alarm clocks, and pressure sensors are changing the way businesses are run and how workers do their jobs. But we can’t expect it to stop with the IoT. The next logical technological frontier is digital twinning, and it has the potential to completely transform the enterprise.
“Digital twins” are completely virtualized models of physical products, processes, and services that use sensors to produce digital renditions (“twins”) of these physical phenomena. Sensors embedded in objects (i.e. manufacturing robots and medical equipment) ingest real-time status data (i.e. location, temperature, position) into cloud-based virtual machines, where it’s then analyzed against business and other contextual data.
The ability to analyze these physical phenomena with the granularity facilitated by virtual environments can enable companies in the enterprise to capture hidden insights, and then harness these insights to optimize virtually every aspect of their operations.
If digital twinning sounds otherworldly, that’s because it is: the technology was first developed by NASA, which realized it needed a way to operate and maintain systems to which it didn’t have physical access (see: the Mars Rovers). Digital twin technology (DTT) allowed NASA to create, test, and build new equipment in virtual environments — speeding up development, reducing costs, and enabling otherwise-impossible innovations.
But NASA is no longer the only organization in the world leveraging digital twin technologies — far from it, in fact. Rapid advancements in IoT technology, machine learning, and cloud computing have permitted enterprises across all industries to effectively employ DTT.
For example, digital twins can allow hospitals to better understand patient needs. Surgeons can use a digital twin to practice a surgery before performing the operation, improving patient outcomes and saving lives. Accordingly, the global market for DTT is expected to reach $16 billion by 2023.
For primary schools and universities, digital twinning offers the opportunity to model how any change in the system will impact the student-instructor ecosystem, preventing operational disruptions down the line. And in the enterprise, companies can create digital versions of their equipment, as well as generate actionable insights into the performance of their supply chains without having to risk delays or disruptions.
While the potentially enormous benefits are clear, implementing digital twin technology will require significant financial investment, sustained commitment, and collaborative planning. For some in the enterprise, it may even call for a total infrastructural overhaul.
Despite these obstacles, companies that fail to make use of DTT should expect to fall behind the competition. As digital twinning advances and presents more opportunities for innovation and optimization, enterprise networks will need to match the increased bandwidth with next-gen networks.
Sounds like a great plan, but many companies’ internal IT teams struggle even to handle everyday support tickets. And with IT staffing still very much in crisis, building a team that’s capable of going beyond the day-to-day can be costly — and in some cases impossible.
That’s why, for companies preparing to compete in the brave new world of digital twin technology, it makes so much sense to partner with an experienced networking expert like Turn-key Technologies (TTI). With unparallelled, industry-leading expertise in wireless networking, infrastructure design and deployment, and virtualization, TTI has the capabilities to solve the networking challenges of today and tomorrow.
Reach out for a quote and initial consultation today.