Beancounters at the Gartner Group have added up some numbers and reached the conclusion that two-thirds of organisations implementing the Internet of Things (IoT) projects are using or planning to use digital twin technology.
For those who came in late, a digital twin is a “software design pattern that represents a physical object with the objective of understanding the asset’s state, responding to changes, improving business operations and adding value”.
Nearly 15 percent of companies implementing IoT projects already use digital twin technology, while 62 per cent of organisations are either in the process of setting it up or plan to do so within a year.
Benoit Lheureux, research VP at Gartner, said: “The results – especially when compared with past surveys – show that digital twins are slowly entering mainstream use.
“We predicted that by 2022, over two-thirds of companies that have implemented IoT will have deployed at least one digital twin in production. We might actually reach that number within a year. We see digital twin adoption in all kinds of organisations. However, manufacturers of IoT-connected products are the most progressive, as the opportunity to differentiate their product and establish new service and revenue streams is a clear business driver.”
Another key attraction of digital twins for enterprise use is that digital twins can serve different constituencies inside and outside the organisation.
Digital twin constituencies can range from internal IoT data consumers, such as employees and commercial partners, to technology providers.
Gartner found nearly a third of organisations said that most of their digital twins served multiple constituencies, while 54 percent reported that though their digital twin is primarily for the use of one constituency, it has been used to serve multiple constituencies.
