Working in cooperation with 17 partner companies, Siemens Italy has founded MindSphere World based in Italy. The new association is designed to expand the reach of the ecosystem based on MindSphere in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. MindSphere is the cloud-based open IoT operating system from Siemens and forms a vital focus of its comprehensive digitalization offering. MindSphere enables data of any company, factory, plant or infrastructure to be collected, analysed and converted into knowledge and information, and so help to secure business success in the age of Industry 4.0.

“The MindSphere World Association was founded in Germany back in January this year with the aim of becoming established worldwide right from the start. Today, the Association has taken an important step forward, welcoming Italy as the next participating country on its worldwide expansion route. The foundation of a regional MindSphere user organization for Italy, France, Spain and Portugal not only represents another key milestone on the way towards promoting the ecosystem surrounding the open IoT platform: it also underpins once again the strategic importance of the Italian market to Siemens in the industrial sector, both in the manufacturing and in the process industries, and the role played by Siemens and the industrial divisions in Italy within the global context. Among the founders of MindSphere World, it is relevant to highlight the presence of universities, industrial partners, innovative startups as well as machine building partners, that are interested in increasing their competitiveness and technological innovations in their main markets”, explained Giuliano Busetto, chair of MindSphere World in Italy, country division lead Digital Factory and Process Industries and Drives at Siemens Italy, and administrator of Siemens Industrial Software.

The association aims to extend this ecosystem around the world. Its role is also to support individual members in their bid to develop and optimize their MindSphere-based IoT solutions and to open up new markets in the digital economy. This also includes defining what it is industry expects of the MindSphere platform, and recommendations for creating standardized rules for data utilization. Another role of the Association will be to promote research and development and also training possibilities.

Andrea Gozzi, secretary-general of MindSphere World in Italy and business development manager for industrial software in the Digital Factory Division at Siemens Italy, added: “By creating a regional community made up of companies of all sizes from the fields of IT and manufacturing, which play an overarching role across different industries, our aim is to provide a concrete basis from which to drive forward the MindSphere-based ecosystem. The extensive expertise and wide-ranging portfolios of our association partners will open up exciting new potential in the field of digitalization across the whole of Italy, France, Spain and Portugal”.