A few weeks back we joined Nikhil Chauhan, Wind River’s digital transformation officer, to discuss open-source solutions during the webinar “Meeting Energy Industry Challenges with Open-Source Solutions." Here we chat with him about launching IIoT platforms, fully capitalizing on open-source opportunities, and the near future of energy-production. Take a look…
Smart Industry: What is one benefit of open-source solutions that most appeals to you?
Nikhil: Energy players have a lot of data, distributed devices, and siloed systems. For example, utilities may process 1.1 billion data points per day. Making sense of them and getting actionable intelligence through software-defined solutions is crucial for their modernization plays. Open-source software enables these solutions by offering transparency and the ability to integrate more tools, products and platforms for less work, greater automation, and more solution value.
Smart Industry: You are credited with launching the first modern IIoT platform at GE. What is the greatest takeaway from that and other experiences?
Nikhil: One of my key takeaways from transformation journeys is to ruthlessly focus on the business outcomes, not on technology metrics. This helps to measure the impact on customers. Also, the business and technology leaders should define joint accountability for desired outcomes.
Smart Industry: What opportunities in the immediate future of energy-production excite you? What must we do to fast-track these wins?
Nikhil: I am excited that digital technologies are being adopted to transition to more clean, decarbonized and electric systems. These systems will be increasingly technology-led, software-defined and AI-driven. The energy industry can fast-track these wins by leveraging an edge-multicloud compute paradigm, predictive systems, digital twins, collaborative workflows, and automation. These, together with an open-source commitment to harness the pool of innovation, will be tremendously advantageous.
