Earlier this month, an important Memorandum of Understanding (or MOU) was signed under the witness of the German chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. The MOU declares a partnership between Siemens and Alibaba Cloud in which the two companies will “leverage each other’s technology and industry resources to build a unique IoT solution to support Industrie 4.0, China’s manufacturing upgrade and transformation and other industrial Internet initiatives.”
Significantly, two Cloud Foundry Foundation members — Alibaba Cloud and SAP — are involved in this partnership, and will be using Cloud Foundry in the creation of this IoT solution for China. The Siemens MindSphere platform is built using SAP’s SAP Cloud Platform, including the Cloud Foundry Application Runtime capabilities, while Alibaba Cloud will be the cloud infrastructure provider.
As I write this, I’m in Beijing witnessing first hand the rapid digitization trends that are sweeping this nation. As Abby Kearns discussed recently, the Foundation has been working closely with organizations in China who have begun or are beginning to digitize their businesses. Several Chinese companies, including Alibaba Cloud, Huawei, MoPaaS, and Colorful Guizhou Big Data Talent Development Ltd, have joined the Foundation as members, and we hope to welcome many more.
The digitization of industry is driving massive changes in industrial companies worldwide as they seek to use the power of software to connect physical devices to the cloud, improve the production process and use predictive modeling for preventative maintenance. While there are many services needed to produce a valuable industrial IoT platform, one thing is certain: the platform must support rapid application development. Thanks to its agile, scalable and flexible capabilities, along with our community’s sincere dedication to developer experience, Cloud Foundry is a natural choice for companies dedicated to spreading IoT technologies across China.
