Industrial IoT Success Begins with Asset-Centric Data and Strict Confidentiality

In the realm of industrial digitization, two themes consistently emerge: a focus on asset-level data collection and an uncompromising commitment to confidentiality. IBM’s Al Opher, General Manager for the US Industrial Market, Sales & Distribution, shared these insights at last week’s Industrial IoT World conference in Atlanta.

"Most of the clients I work with say the same thing: ‘Al, this project is super critical, super important, and you can’t tell a soul,’" Opher recalled. "Everything is secret because it’s the competitive advantage – the margin potential that drives their decision to keep it hidden.”

Opher emphasized that IoT technologies lie at the heart of these initiatives. He highlighted the importance of beginning with assets, which are already instrumented, before expanding into production, inventory, logistics, and ultimately consumer-facing solutions.

Clients typically prefer to finance IIoT projects as operating expenditures. IBM addresses this preference through self‑funding project models that deploy out‑of‑the‑box software within a four‑ to six‑month timeframe. The early savings generated help fund the remainder of the initiative.

Securing organization-wide buy‑in hinges on a "show me, don’t tell me" philosophy. IBM’s Garage accelerates this by combining design‑thinking principles with proprietary IBM elements, enabling clients to co‑create revenue‑generating use cases such as data monetization and sharing.

According to Opher, the true driver of digital transformation is the end use of data, not the industry itself. How customers leverage asset data to boost operational efficiencies and launch new revenue streams is where true disruption occurs.

"Every product company wants to sell services, every services company wants to sell solutions," Opher concluded. "Disruption often gets discussed at the industry level, but I argue it happens below that – at the product and service level.”