Siemens has formalised a strategic alliance agreement with global infrastructure software provider, Bentley Systems, to leverage digitisation to advance infrastructure project delivery and asset performance.
Siemens and Bentley Systems will reportedly initially invest at least €50m in developing joint solutions to enlarge their respective offerings for infrastructure and industry, leveraging new new cloud services for a connected data environment to converge respective digital engineering models from both companies.
Additionaly, it has also been announced that approximately €70m of secondary shares of Bentley’s common stock have been acquired by Siemens, under a company programme that will continue until such time as Bentley Systems’ stock is publicly traded.
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Siemens and Bentley Systems have a track record of complementing their respective portfolios through the licensing of each other’s technology to provide solutions in Siemens‘ Digital Factory and Process Industries & Drives divisions.
The new investment initiatives is expected to involve virtually all Siemens divisions. The major benefit will be accumulating intelligence from Siemens solutions throughout Bentley’s complementary applications for design modeling, analytical modeling, construction modeling and asset performance modeling.
As a result, the integrated and accessible digital engineering models, such as the ‘digital twin’ viewed through an immersive 3D interface, is hoped to enable far greater operational performance, visibility and reliability. This work will converge digital engineering models: physical engineering models in their 3D physical reality context by way of Bentley’s software solutions and the corresponding functional engineering 2D models within Siemens’ solutions.
As of mow, Siemens and Bentley Systems have identified opportunities to work together in energy management; power generation; building technology, and mobility, where each company can leverage their respective technology and industry expertise to bring new business value to the market.
Member of the managing board of Siemens AG, Klaus Helmrich explained: “This move further extends our industry software ecosystem from 2D to 3D software solutions, taking the simulation portfolio in our Digital Enterprise offering to a new dimension.
“We’re rigorously executing our ‘digital twin’ vision from virtual planning to the real product to the benefit of our customers who themselves are driving digitalisation across their value chains. Bentley Systems’ independence, track record in interoperability, and leadership in engineering- and design- software make them our ideal partner for this undertaking.”
