LIVE FROM TECHEX EUROPE, AMSTERDAM: Orange Business head of IoT Sebastian Grabowski (pictured) cited enterprises’ disorganised data and so-called spaghetti systems as hampering adoption of digital twins, even if the customer is sold on the concept.

During a presentation on its work in smart cities and digital twins, the IoT expert highlighted a common pain point cited by prospective adopters of the latter is a lack of quality data available in their own systems to make the concept a reality.

“Currently there is a big problem with the adoption of digital twins”, he said, noting when showing clients the “beautiful proofs of concepts and beautiful ideas” able to be achieved, the response is commonly “sounds great, but the biggest problem I see is with my data”.

Among the specific issues highlighted is many organisations’ “production and machines are using one independent isolated system”, with issues extracting the information for use elsewhere.

“In my opinion now is not the time for a lot of businesses to invest in digital twins,” Grabowski explained. “They are just monitoring what is happening, just assessing what type of visualisation is available on the market.”

The executive indicated enterprises first had to “solve the problem with the spaghetti systems they have, how to combine OT and IT environments and how to extract data from different elements of the factory, because digital twins really make sense when you are able to connect the different sources of data”.