If the launch of personal computers a few decades ago marked a threshold in technology, cloud is “another chance at the starting line,” feels Keith Bentley, Chief Technology Officer, Bentley Systems.

In a chat with BusinessLine at Bentley’s ‘Year in Infrastructure 2017’ international conference, he said while personal computers enhanced individual productivity, cloud is a new way to address many things. It creates a vast opportunity and is a “second once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he felt.

A digital future He was talking in the backdrop of the conference on digitalisation of infrastructure and the cloud-based products and services that enable it. Over 1,500 participants had gathered at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre here for the three-day event organised by Bentley — a software systems provider for infrastructure companies — on the opportunities and challenges that digitalisation represents for project delivery and asset performance.

Digitalisation, automation, machine learning, artificial intelligence, cloud-based services…the terms flowed freely as senior executives from some of the largest infrastructure products and services companies addressed the gathering.

At a panel discussion by Bentley’s alliance partners, participants got a perspective on the scale of digitalisation and transformation, in the way infrastructure is designed, built and operated.

Ray O’Connor, CEO, Topcon Positioning Group, a company that manufactures positioning sensors, said the $10-trillion construction sector is taking to automation. Topcon makes about 4,000 kits for automating job sites; but for every two heavy equipment that are automated, there are 98 more that are not. Automation by large construction companies has so far been in the after-market, but the tipping point has been reached.

Since 1945, productivity in agriculture has increased 1,500 per cent, in manufacturing 750 per cent and in construction just 6 per cent. Digitalisation is key to filling the productivity gap, he said.

Huge investments Leslie Sistla, Director, Global Alliances Manufacturing and Resources Industry, Microsoft, said the company provides a secure cloud platform that will help this transformation. “It is truly time for automation and data,” she added.

Huge investments are going into the security for a trusted cloud, she said.

Michael Schneider, Global Head and General Manager, Siemens Power Technologies International, said the infrastructure company has had a long presence in IT with more than a $4-billion business in software and automation. But now it is moving forward with linking automation with application software.

This writer is in Singapore at the invitation of Bentley Systems.

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