English

By Wang Shen

Alibaba Cloud and Siemens AG signed a memorandum of understanding on collaboratively promoting the industrial Internet of Things (IoT) on July 9 in Berlin, Germany, to implement Siemens' MindSphere platform in Alibaba Cloud by 2019.

Alibaba Cloud is ranked as China's largest public cloud service provider and the third largest worldwide, and Siemens is one of the world's largest producers of energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies, and a leading supplier of systems for power generation and transmission as well as medical diagnosis systems.

MindSphere is an open and cloud-based IoT operating system from Siemens that lets customers connect their machines and physical infrastructures to the digital world. It enables customers to harness big data from billions of intelligent devices, allowing them to uncover transformational insights across an entire business.

Siemens will first build the underlying architecture of the MindSphere industrial IoT operating system on the servers of Alibaba Cloud.

Alibaba Cloud has previously applied artificial intelligence (AI) to the industrial manufacturing field and created the ET Industrial Brain. With a focus on the industrial activities, including supply chains, research and development, production, and marketing, the ET Industrial Brain uses AI algorithms and big data analysis to help companies solve critical problems, such as adjustment of the optimal parameters, the control of production processes and the diagnosis of equipment malfunctions.

Hu Xiaoming, the president of Alibaba Cloud, stated that the collaboration with Siemens indicated another step in Alibaba Cloud's plan of achieving digital transformation around the world. He believed that this collaboration would accelerate the upgrade of industrial IoT products and services.

Siemens and Alibaba Cloud will also work together on market development to foster an industrial IoT ecosystem.