Microsoft, Siemens unite to streamline IoT & digital twin tech

In a strategic move to streamline Internet of Things (IoT) related matters, Microsoft and Siemens have announced a partnership to converge the Digital Twin Definition Language (DTDL) with the Thing Description standard from the international standards body W3C. The integration seeks to foster cooperative work, accelerate innovation and facilitate the exchange of digital twin models and data, reducing IoT fragmentation in the process.

Digital twins, or virtual replicas of physical objects or systems that replicate their real-world equivalents in a digital space, allow organisations to monitor, predict, and enhance the performance of their assets. They lead to improved efficiency and reduced costs. Therefore, the standardisation of Digital Twin languages becomes critical for seamless communication and integration among different systems and platforms.

Customers often deploy a blend of vendor options in their infrastructure, which usually results in integration challenges and a closed-loop system. Through this unification, however, Siemens and Microsoft aim to provide consumers with consistent modelling experiences and facilitate system integration and interoperability.

Thomas Kiessling, Chief Technology Officer at Siemens Smart Infrastructure, said, "We see the convergence of two very similar Digital Twin languages like the DTDL and the W3C Thing Description as an essential move that will enable customers to describe the physical world in a way that is agnostic to specific IoT platforms. This strategic alliance underscores our commitment to fostering collaboration and embracing openness."

The standardisation of Microsoft's Digital Twin Definition Language enables the modelling of the physical world using Azure services, and the W3C Thing Description standard provides an interoperable representation of device interfaces incorporating standard industry ontologies. The close partnership between Microsoft and Siemens in merging these two has revealed many conceptual similarities during the early stages of convergence.

Erich Barnstedt, Chief Architect Standards, Consortia and Industrial IoT, Azure Edge and Platform team, Microsoft Corporation, explained the future-facing impact of their alliance, "Ever since we invented the Digital Twin Definition Language and open-sourced its specification and reference implementations, we planned to standardise it through a consortium like the W3C. Therefore, merging DTDL with W3C Thing Description, in close partnership with Siemens, is the natural next step in our journey to democratise digital twins in the industry."

Siemens already uses the emerging W3C Thing Description standard for future products in building management, power distribution, and smart grids. As such, extending this interoperability strategy to Microsoft Azure will bring about significant benefits to customers. This move highlights both companies' determination to apprehend the complexities and navigate the challenges associated with IoT and digital twin technology through cooperative effort and unified standards.