Data, Data, Everywhere, And Every Byte Of It To Think: Industrial DataOps Solutions Enable Advanced Analytics

Data, Data, Everywhere, And Every Byte Of It To Think: Industrial DataOps Solutions Enable Advanced Analytics

Industrial data management is a battle against the second law of thermodynamics. In the same way that the second law states that entropy (disorder) in a closed system will always increase over time, industrial data also tends towards a state of disorganization and chaos if left unmanaged. Data represents reality, but is not reality itself. It consists of symbols and numbers used to convey information, but is not the information itself. Just like in our present universe, a plethora of processes are generating petabytes of data across mines, factories, plants and rigs across the world – but without proper management, these digital diamonds will quickly become coal.

To address this, industrial firms are increasingly turning to data ingestion, contextualization and analytics orchestration enabled by data management solutions. Our recent Operational Excellence report found that half of the 301 industrial firms surveyed have implemented, are currently implementing, or plan to implement industrial DataOps solutions. These trends hold true for enterprises bringing in $250 million to $5 billion annually, as well as those exceeding $20 billion in turnover, suggesting widespread demand for tools that enforce data management best practices. However, awareness of data management solutions and their applications vary substantially by industry. Firms in automotive, mining, power T&D and pharmaceutical manufacturing have low awareness – while power generation, water utilities and aerospace & defence see high levels of awareness and uptake of data management software.

Respondents to the Verdantix survey also ranked the importance of various data management activities for 2023, placing expanding data acquisition at the top with 97% of respondents rating it as ‘very important’ or ‘important’. Establishing a single source of truth – a synchronized, de-siloed, forkless enterprise information repository – and data visualization were both rated as important by 90%. The two next highest priorities were data contextualization and data security. Industrial software vendors cater to these needs through a variety of approaches. HighByte and Uptake offer low-code graphical user interfaces for facility operators to package disparate data into consistent payloads for use in driving other analytics software. Meanwhile, AVEVA leverages its ownership of PI System to enable data acquisition, contextualization and analytics within a single software platform. Similarly, Cognite and Hitachi Vantara focus on delivering data contextualization across structured and unstructured data types.

To win the fight against the unstoppable reality of ever-increasing entropy, industrial firms must deploy active measures to constantly monitor data acquisition, contextualization and storage. Without the ability to interpret data, it is no more useful than cosmic dust.

For more information on industrial DataOps and data management solutions, check out the recently published Verdantix Smart Innovators: Industrial Data Management Solutions report, which analyses the capabilities of 20 industrial data management solution vendors.