Digital twin adoption to skyrocket in IoT projects - Gartner

Business value of digital twin attractive to enterprise firms, according to analyst

Two thirds of organisations implementing Internet of Things (IoT) projects are using or planning to use digital twin technology within a year, according to a recent Gartner survey.

The analyst defines a digital twin as a "software design pattern that represents a physical object with the objective of understanding the asset's state, responding to changes, improving business operations and adding value".

Nearly 15 per cent of companies implementing IoT projects already use digital twin technology, while 62 per cent of organisations are either in the process of setting it up or plan to do so within a year.

Benoit Lheureux, research VP at Gartner, said: "The results - especially when compared with past surveys - show that digital twins are slowly entering mainstream use.

"We predicted that by 2022, over two thirds of companies that have implemented IoT will have deployed at least one digital twin in production. We might actually reach that number within a year."

The analyst house attributed this growing adoption rate to marketing and education efforts on the part of vendors, as well as the business value it offers enterprise organisations.

"We see digital twin adoption in all kinds of organisations," said Lheureux.

"However, manufacturers of IoT-connected products are the most progressive, as the opportunity to differentiate their product and establish new service and revenue streams is a clear business driver."

Another key attraction of digital twins for enterprise use is that digital twins can serve different constituencies inside and outside the organisation.

Digital twin constituencies can range from internal IoT data consumers, such as employees and commercial partners, to technology providers.

Gartner's data reported that nearly a third of organisations said that most of their digital twins served multiple constituencies, while 54 per cent reported that though their digital twin is primarily for the use of one constituency, it has been used to serve multiple constituencies.

"These findings show that digital twins serve a wide range of business objectives," said Lheureux.

"Designers of digital twins should keep in mind that they will probably need to accommodate multiple data consumers and provide appropriate data access points."