ICONICS recently announced it has won the 2022 Microsoft Internet of Things (IoT) Partner of the Year Award. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft Partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

"ICONICS is honored to be named the 2022 Microsoft IoT Partner of the Year," said Ted Hill, President and CEO of ICONICS. "We have a long history of collaborating with Microsoft and leveraging their latest technologies to develop innovative solutions to solve our customers' sustainability and automation challenges. This is the seventh time we’ve been recognized by Microsoft as a global award winner, and now with ICONICS as part of Mitsubishi Electric’s global business portfolio, we are able to further extend IoT Solutions into industry, infrastructure, and facilities applications worldwide.”

The Internet of Things Partner of the Year Award recognizes a partner that has designed, developed and deployed IoT solutions built on Microsoft intelligent cloud and intelligent edge innovations (such as Azure IoT, Windows IoT, and edge devices) with customers. ICONICS’ Azure IoT solution, IoTWorX, harnesses signals and untapped data from existing and new devices, unlocking powerful insights, and helping businesses take action – to deliver operational efficiencies, to transform business models, and to add new revenue streams, for themselves and for their customers. These solutions are helping companies quickly improve their businesses just by knowing more about their assets and equipment, such as where they are at any given time or predicting maintenance needs to ensure zero downtime – ultimately improving business results and increasing customer value.

“I am honored to announce the winners and finalists of the 2022 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards,” said Nick Parker, corporate vice president of Global Partner Solutions at Microsoft. “These partners were outstanding among the exceptional pool of nominees and I’m continuously impressed by their innovative use of Microsoft Cloud technologies and the impact for their customers.” 

Siemens AG has launched an open digital business platform, Siemens Xcelerator, to accelerate digital transformation and value creation for customers of all sizes in industry, buildings, grids and mobility. The business platform makes digital transformation easier, faster and scalable. Siemens Xcelerator includes a curated portfolio of internet of things (IoT) enabled hardware, software and digital services from across Siemens and certified third parties; a growing ecosystem of partners; and an evolving marketplace to facilitate interactions and transactions between customers, partners and developers. 

ABB and Red Hat have announced a global partnership to enable industries using ABB’s process automation and industrial software to scale rapidly and flexibly leveraging Red Hat’s industry leading enterprise platforms and application services built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The collection, management and analysis of industrial plant data is critical to improve the efficiency of operations while addressing safety, security and productivity needs. This is consistent with ABB’s strategy for the evolution of process automation.

The partnership enables virtualization and containerization of automation software with Red Hat OpenShift to provide advanced flexibility in hardware deployment, optimized according to application needs. It also provides efficient system orchestration, enabling real-time, data-based decision making at the edge and further processing in the cloud.

Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux as its foundation, provides ABB with a single consistent application platform, from small single node systems to scaled-out hyperconverged clusters at the industrial edge, which simplifies development and management efforts for ABB’s customers.

“This exciting partnership with Red Hat demonstrates ABB’s commitment to meet customer needs by seeking alliances with other innovative market leaders,” said Bernhard Eschermann, Chief Technology Officer, ABB Process Automation. “The alliance with Red Hat will see ABB continue helping our customers improve their operations as they navigate a rapidly evolving digital landscape. It will give them access to the tools they need to integrate plantwide IT and OT, while reducing risks and optimizing performance.”

Red Hat OpenShift increases the deployment flexibility and scalability of ABB Ability™ Edgenius, a comprehensive edge platform for industrial software applications, together with ABB Ability™ Genix Industrial Analytics and AI Suite, an enterprise-grade platform and applications suite that leverages industrial AI to drive Industry 4.0 digital business outcomes for customers. ABB’s Edgenius and Genix can both be scaled seamlessly and securely across multiple deployments. With this partnership, ABB will have access to capabilities like zero-touch provisioning (remote configuration of networks) which can increase manageability and consistency across plant environments.

ABB has opened its new global innovation and training campus at the headquarters of B&R in Eggelsberg, Austria, its global center for machine and factory automation. The new campus will create up to 1,000 additional high-tech jobs and includes world-class research and development laboratories, as well as global training facilities for up to 4,000 people per year in collaboration with universities. ABB invested EUR 100 million in the expansion of the B&R headquarters.

Campus innovations around artificial intelligence and machine and factory automation will play an essential role in unlocking the potential of future industrial production – in sectors such as electronics, e-mobility, food and beverage, recycling, logistics, or agriculture. They will increase productivity and flexibility, helping customers become more sustainable and produce closer to their end markets.

ABB CEO Björn Rosengren said: "Innovation has been in ABB’s DNA for more than 130 years and our division, B&R, is a true innovation hot-spot for the transformation towards more automated manufacturing. The official opening of this campus is a proud moment for our ABB as we create highly-skilled jobs while shaping the machines and factories of the future together with our customers.”

A hub for integrated production, research, and training in central Europe

The new campus expands the total area of B&R's headquarters to more than 100,000 m², making B&R one of the largest sites for integrated production, research, and training in central Europe, with currently around 2,400 employees. The expansion will also free up space which will serve as additional production capacity to meet increasing demand for B&R products.

Austria's Chancellor Karl Nehammer thanked ABB for an important initiative: “Investments in our business location are always also investments in the future of Austria. The corona pandemic, disruptions in global supply chains and now the war in Ukraine clearly remind us that we need to become more independent if we want to be better prepared for future challenges. I am therefore pleased that ABB is taking an important step in bringing manufacturing back home with the opening of its new innovation and training campus. The new campus will not only be a driver for digitalisation and automation, but also will create jobs and contribute to prosperity in Austria.”