The Connected Industry Takes Shape At AVEVA World 2025 – Now Comes The Hard Part

The Connected Industry Takes Shape At AVEVA World 2025 – Now Comes The Hard Part

Coming out of AVEVA World 2025 in San Francisco, one message rang clear: AVEVA isn’t just supporting convergence, it’s enabling it. CEO Caspar Herzberg opened the event by positioning AVEVA not as a vendor of individual tools, but as the orchestrator of an open, connected ecosystem – or, in Caspar Herzberg’s words, radical collaboration. The emphasis was on evolution, delivering value through alignment across IT, OT and engineering technology (ET), with AVEVA’s Connect platform as the core digital backbone of this vision.

CTO Rob McGreevy expanded on this vision with a walkthrough of the transformation of AVEVA’s Unified Operations Center. What started as a visualization tool has become a full command-and-control hub. It now combines real-time asset data, engineering context and cloud-to-edge connectivity to support operational visibility and informed decision-making across teams and roles. These enhancements are part of a broader strategy to unify industrial intelligence.

AI was a major theme throughout the event. AVEVA’s new AI Monitoring Agents help teams detect anomalies and automatically surface the right documents, reducing distractions and improving response time. One practical innovation that stood out was digital twin AI mapping, linking PI and SAP data models without forcing firms to rip and replace existing systems. This development mirrors greater utilization of AI in the market: in engineering, for example, generative AI is now being used to automate piping layouts, clash detection and site optioneering, delivering clear time savings and efficiency gains.

Another key development discussed at the event was AVEVA’s new partnership with Databricks. The collaboration aims to provide customers with a more scalable environment for building advanced AI and machine learning models by connecting AVEVA’s industrial data foundation to the Databricks lakehouse architecture. For firms moving from pilot projects to enterprise-scale AI, this type of integration creates a more practical path forward.

Customer examples helped ground the platform announcements in measurable outcomes.  Albemarle, a global chemicals manufacturer, shared how it unlocked $150 million in value by integrating AVEVA’s data infrastructure and AI tools across multiple sites. This allowed teams to identify performance gaps, optimize energy usage and standardize best practices across operations. Meanwhile, Bayer is standardizing PI System data across its global manufacturing sites, leading to noticeable improvements in overall equipment effectiveness and setting the foundation for more consistent, scalable performance.

Reflecting evolving corporate sentiment, sustainability wasn’t always front and centre in the general sessions – but it did feature prominently in several breakout tracks and on the mainstage. The event included a dedicated sustainability awards programme, and many of the use cases shared in sessions touched on energy efficiency and emissions tracking. Although we’d always like to see more, there was plenty of evidence that AVEVA continues to integrate sustainability into its platform and roadmap. This kind of approach will stand organizations in good stead, given rising regulatory pressure and customer expectations around carbon transparency.

While field technicians and other frontline workers were not a major focus during the event, they play a critical role in asset performance. Expanding support for these users through mobile tools, guided workflows and contextual data access would help strengthen the digital thread AVEVA is building – and should be a focus for any vendor in the space. Similarly, the connection between maintenance, asset reliability and the broader supply chain was less prominent. As more firms look to align operations with procurement and production planning, this presents a clear opportunity for AVEVA to extend its impact or explore strategic partnerships.

AVEVA World 2025 demonstrated AVEVA’s continuing transition from a collection of acquired solutions into a unified industrial platform. The vision is clear and the building blocks are in place. What happens next will depend on how AVEVA follows through by deepening its sustainability strategy, empowering the connected workforce and scaling intelligence across the enterprise. To learn more about AVEVA’s industrial data management offering and the other providers in the market, head to Verdantix Green Quadrant: Industrial Data Management Solutions 2025.