AU 2015: Autodesk Sees Future in ‘SeeControl’ Acquisition, Offers New IoT Cloud Service

At Autodesk University 2015, running this week in Las Vegas, software giant Autodesk announced a new cloud service targeting the sensor-based data that manufacturers can now tap via its SeeControl acquisition.

It’s All About the Service

Autodesk SeeControl is a comprehensive new platform that allows customers to capture, analyze, and use data from remote products. Think, your break pads are now talking to you!

Acquired by Autodesk this past September, SeeControl offers manufacturers the ability to utilize sensors in their manufactured products to capture all kinds of data, analyze that data and then provide the customers of those products additional services.

A growth in new services revenue is where manufactures are aiming and they hope to compete in the market more affectively by providing customers services that benefit the use and lifecycle costs associated with physical products.

Welcome to the Internet of Things (IoT)

“The future of making products in the machinery and specialty vehicles industries is changing quickly and the expectations for online services have increased,” said Brian Roepke, senior director of Product Lifecycle Management and Internet of Things at Autodesk. “The addition of SeeControl to the Autodesk line of IoT services will help businesses gain competitive advantage by optimizing existing products and capturing the necessary intelligence to offer their customers new services.”

01 – Autodesk SeeControl is a new IoT offering. Image is screen capture of website for product offering.

The Internet of Things refers to the growing ecosystem of physical products that contain sensors that supply data to onboard electronics and software that can communicate to the Internet. The goal is that use data in particular can be gathered by the manufacturer, thereby telling them which features of products are more valued and how they are used. The data will also be useful for telling customers things about their products and how to optimally use them over time. Sophisticated manufactured goods are particular good targets for the IoT wave change coming into the world.

SeeControl Offering

• It’s a true multi-tenant cloud solution, which helps customers get up and running in minutes
• It’s a device and communication protocol agnostic system (no single standard tied in)
• It’s easy to use, with no-coding and drag-and-drop tools for device communications, data analytics, visualization and business

“Since the acquisition, Autodesk has moved aggressively to further develop SeeControl by connecting it with core Autodesk services such as 3D visualization,” said Roepke. “Bringing the live data from SeeControl into our engineering tools will better inform the next generation of designs and empower SeeControl customers in ways that weren’t previously possible before.”

“We’re excited about adopting Autodesk SeeControl because of the many ways it can help us grow our business and provide unparalleled service to our customers,” said David Keeley, Engineering Manager at TSM Control Systems. “In just a matter of days, we were able to connect to SeeControl and begin extracting value from live data collected from one of our products. We’re looking forward to what SeeControl will help us accomplish in the future.”

Architosh Analysis

Sensors are where a lot of the real magic is at in the IoT ecosystem just beginning. Architosh first started talking about sensors back in 2011 at the Smart Geometry Conference in Copenhagen. The theme involved sensor data and data in design.

MORE: The Smartgeometry Workshop

At a recent ABX 2015 conference session, sensors were used in a roofing system on a new structure. The sensors were configured so that if a roof system failed and there was a leakage the sensors would detect the presence of water leakage and communicate to a system via the Internet, alerting professionals like building facilities management or building owners and operators. Early detection of a roof leak could save thousands of dollars versus the damage a leak could cause once caught much later on.

Some folks may question the immediate value of an Internet of Things type of world, but professionals and businesses are developing valuable case studies like the one just mentioned that offer a lot of obvious value.