Cross sector examples include applications for servitisation (pay per use and other business models) of equipment, remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, asset performance & energy management, carbon, enterprise data integration, command & control, risk management, health & safety, training, customer and community engagement.
Sector specific examples include applications for supply chain visibility and optimizing processes in Manufacturing, simulating impact of treatments for patients, and virtual health monitoring in Healthcare; passenger flow management in Airports; urban planning, management of traffic / waste / public safety / land records in Smart Cities; inventory management in Retail; space utilisation and occupant wellness in Buildings; grid management for Energy Utilities; demand forecasting, quality and loss management in Water Utilities; planning and simulation in Construction; service quality management, dynamic pricing, and resource allocation in Telecommunication; connected vehicle and fleet management in Automotive, and many more.
Applications that transform how the world works and how humans interact with that world, need to bridge the physical – digital divide, and obtain context and understanding of the physical world. They need a knowledge graph that digitally represents relevant entities in the physical world, their relationships with each other, and data relating to such entities. Digital Twins composed on Twinit will enable that. Using the digital twin at its core, applications can become situationally aware, orchestrate data to and from AI models, and deliver user experiences with intuitive and contextual visualisation.
Twinit enables systems integrators to define the ontology of the “world” they wish to twin, build a data model based on the ontology, extract, transform and persist data from all relevant sources. It builds a knowledge graph of the world that is twinned and supports flexible and open mechanisms for information exchange with data sources and consumers, enable multi modal visualisation, and integrations with analytics and simulation systems.
Digital twins developed on Twinit can apply to systems, system of systems (such as buildings, infrastructure & cities), equipment, processes, people, or places, and power applications across all industry sectors from agriculture to aviation. They vary in sophistication and can be descriptive (collecting & visualizing data), Informative (generating insights by analysing data), predictive (AI powered simulations to forecast outcomes), prescriptive (recommend interventions), or transformative (make interventions to make things autonomous). Digital twins built on Twinit can be discrete (e.g., a single robot that is part of a manufacturing line, with capability to monitor, implement predictive maintenance, or optimize its performance) or composite (e.g., an entire manufacturing line, providing detailed understanding of the entire production system).
Applications that need real world integration, real time monitoring, simulation, and intuitive visualisation, significantly benefit from digital twin technologies. The effort to build digital twins and integrate them into applications is not seamless, is expensive, and hard to maintain. Twinit solves this problem by providing a core set of capabilities that allows systems integrators to not only compose digital twins, but also compose digital twin enabled applications on the same platform, while enabling easy integration with third party platform services to complement its core capabilities.
Enterprises need bespoke applications, typically implemented by multiple systems integrators. This leads to a heterogenous mix of software applications, built and delivered on very differing technology stacks, resulting in increased lifecycle costs, lack of inter-operability, gaps in maintenance, support and more. CIOs of enterprises are also striving to harmonise data governance, enhance cyber security, ensure agility, scalability, and sustainability, while streamlining vendor relationships. Twinit solves all these challenges in one go. Its composable architecture implies that applications are composed with just JavaScript and JSON, easily modified, and maintained by anyone. The platform establishes a common tech stack and a standardized pattern for application development. Applications developed on Twinit can be “whitelisted” or “published”, allowing apps to leverage and extend data models from each other, while maintaining access control and permissions as defined. Cyber security considerations are largely addressed at the platform level, reducing the overhead of managing security of multiple distinct applications.
The challenges of digital transformation, the creation of new business models and the deficit in skills are ubiquitous across all industries. There is a need for flexible applications that can address both horizontal and vertical business unit KPI’s, whilst not being constrained by the lack of in-house and wider market skills. Enterprises and each of their business units have unique requirements and therefore require applications that easily be adapted to these specific needs. Given the diversity in entity types, industry segments, and enterprise specific requirements, there is a need for a platform that reduces the pain threshold in implementing applications rapidly and deriving value. Twinit does that with ease.
Twinit is a modern composable platform for developing software applications. It is a data, integration, multi-modal visualisation, and application development platform that allows the creator to compose applications by configuring packaged platform capabilities using JavaScript and JSON. Twinit is un-opinionated, it allows the creator to compose applications they seek to solve in the way they want to solve it. Twinit’s platform capabilities effectively act as the backend for the creator’s application, so they can focus on the business problem and compose applications rapidly without worrying about building bespoke cloud native software and infrastructure. Twinit allows the creator to integrate capabilities offered by other platforms, thereby not limiting their applications to Twinit’s native capabilities. It provides the enterprise independence in maintaining and managing the lifecycle of their applications, considering the simplicity of code.
An application composed on Twinit imposes its schema on the platform. The schema is configured on the platform services using scripts. At any time, the enterprise can adapt and evolve the application just by editing the scripts that define it. This provides enterprises a real possibility to be agile in implementing applications and evolving them progressively as needed to meet continually maturing requirements.
Twinit makes digitalisation a team sport! It provides at least two different paths to building modular software, ecosystems and business models.
Re-composable Applications: Twinit allows ISVs and Systems Integrators to build Apps natively on Twinit using JavaScript and JSON. The Apps are made of scripts (set up scripts and configuration scripts). If the developer chooses to make the App available to others, they may publish the App to the Twinit Marketplace, allowing others to obtain a license to re-use the App and re-compose them as needed by modifying the configuration scripts.
Composable Solutions: Twinit also allows Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to create, curate and catalogue “App Modules” and “Connectors” using Twinit platform services and build no-code / low-code “Configurators” that interact with the catalogue.
App Modules are self-contained blocks of software (composed using JavaScript, JSON and React) and are used in combination with other App Modules, to form a customised solution.
“Composers” (typically digital business units within enterprises) can use the catalogue of App Modules and a No-Code configurator provided by the Creator, to compose Digital Twin enabled solutions that their “Consumers” (business users) need. App Modules built on Twinit are “re-composable” and can be customised using a “low code” configurator provided by the Creator.
While the “Creator” and “Curator” are typically functions within the same ISV, they may also be different organisations working in partnership. This enables a Systems Integrator to build a catalogue of App Modules, and Connectors developed by multiple ISVs.
The platform IP is exclusively owned by Twinit Limited, and is distinct from the IP of Apps and App Modules developed on Twinit.
The IP of the Apps and App Modules developed on Twinit belongs to the Creator. If the Creator is a professional services organization, developing a bespoke solution for an enterprise, the ownership of the IP relating to such a solution would be governed by the terms of contract between the enterprise and such Creator.
The first option would be bespoke software from first principles. This takes much longer time and is more expensive to build and maintain over its lifecycle. This is the right approach for an enterprise that has very strong in-house software development capabilities, and the digital twin is inherent to its product. A good example is Tesla. Their vehicles incorporate digital twins in a very fundamental way and does not exist separate from their product.
The second option would be to develop bespoke software, but using multiple distinct categories of platforms that provide packaged capabilities needed to build applications. It will be faster than building software from first principles, but it comes at the cost of accepting compromises when stitching together capabilities from different platforms that were not necessarily designed to work with each other. Such applications will be less flexible and will pose significant challenges in lifecycle management due to changes to the underlying platform services. This approach will also require the application data to be persisted across many different software platforms posing challenges to data governance and data sovereignty. They will also cost more – incurring many platform subscriptions. It will also inherit some of the challenges inherent to bespoke software.
Twinit is available as a hosted Platform as a Service from Twinit Limited. Enterprises or Creators can purchase subscriptions to use the platform. A Developer license provides access to a sandbox environment, with workspaces for development, testing, and staging of an application. A Production license can be purchased based on licensed tiers that define the capacity and metered usage limits that can be trued up periodically.
Twinit is also available as a “product”. Enterprises can procure a Twinit Platform as a Product license (based on license tiers that define the capacity and metered usage limits that can be trued up periodically). They can contract a Twinit partner (typically systems integrators) who can deploy and manage the platform for the enterprise within their account in a hyperscale cloud infrastructure provider. The SI can also build and manage the Digital Twin enabled applications on the dedicated Twinit instance of the enterprise.