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Software AG bags Belgian IoT bargain, no waffle

Adrian Bridgwater
Adrian Bridgwater

German technologyhaus Software AG has for some time now openly focused on technologies that populate the Internet of Things (IoT).

The man steering much of the company’s development in this space is Bernd Gross in his role as senior VP of IoT & cloud.

Gross now heads up Software AG’s Cumulocity division (a company Software AG first partnered with in March 2017 and then subsequently acquired in March 2018).

As noted here, Cumulocity enables developers at Software AG customers to build what could be called a ‘service wrapper’ around each of their IoT enabled products — and this means that they themselves can deliver new services to their own customers.

Software AG’s Gross has previously warned that over 50% of IoT projects fail, so in this still-nascent undeniably embryonic stage, what is the company doing to solidify its wider approach to IoT development?

Belgian buyout

News this month sees Software AG snap up Belgian visual data analytics company TrendMiner NV.

TrendMiner specialises in visual data analytics for the manufacturing and process industry — its technology will be directly integrated into Software AG’s Cumulocity Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 product portfolio.

TrendMiner works to mine trends, surprisingly.

The technology uses all available time-series IoT data and delivers findings in a ‘user-friendly’ (presumably awesome) format.

Karl-Heinz Streibich, Software AG CEO stated, “TrendMiner provides an ideal fit into our Cumulocity IoT portfolio at a strategically decisive moment. We are in a phase of dynamic market development for IoT applications. Together with TrendMiner, we will be able to offer a leading streaming and visual time-series analytics platform – a unique combination.”

In terms of use, TrendMiner is designed to enable manufacturing companies and the process industries to recognise patterns and trends in their process data, identify production irregularities and adapt necessary process adjustments.

Software AG CEO Streibich has said that TrendMiner has specific expertise in the development and consulting of pattern recognition and analytics functionality for the oil and gas, life sciences and manufacturing sectors.