RTInsights explains how C3’s platform approach is solving enterprise IoT challenges‚ such as interoperability among IoT devices‚ data integration with enterprise applications‚ ingesting and analyzing data‚ handling data volume and velocity‚ clarifying business returns‚ complexity‚ and cost. It also address a critical question for enterprise IT executives: “How does C3.ai solve the time-to-value problem?”

Highlights from the article include:

  • The effort appears to be paying off. In the past year‚ ENGIE‚ a global energy company based win Europe‚ selected C3.ai as the technology foundation for its enterprise-wide IoT platform‚ and the U.S. Department of State awarded C3.ai a multi-year‚ $25 million contract to deploy energy management and predictive analytics technology. In early September‚ C3.ai raised $70 million in venture funding‚ led by TPG. Siebel said C3.ai is now looking to apply its success with energy industry deployments to other verticals.
  • It’s generally not a large leap from the energy industry into other verticals‚ Siebel said. For example‚ managing the health of sensors‚ which the C3 Platform provides‚ can be applied across any industry using sensor data. Identifying energy theft‚ meanwhile‚ isn’t fundamentally different than identifying banking or insurance fraud…In all cases‚ it’s a matter of teaching the system to recognize anomalies in data.
  • It’s also not a leap to go from predicting whether a distribution transformer will fail to predicting whether a part will fail on a Boeing 787 airliner or Caterpillar tractor. And in some respects‚ healthcare can be thought of as a predictive maintenance problem. Health insurance companies also “have a great wealth of information about medical history and lifestyle” of their customers‚ Siebel said. “It’s a classic machine learning problem and a predictive problem — to analyze this data and identify which segment of the insured population will be battling diabetes seven years from now.”
  • Siebel said his business approach with C3.ai is no different than what he’s done before at Siebel Systems with CRM — to establish and maintain a leadership position in the market. C3.ai is starting from a position of strength: it currently has a 40 percent share in the global smart meter market‚ which is miles beyond its competitors GE and Siemens‚ notes Harbor Research in a July 2016 research report.
  • “It looks like an entire replacement of the existing software stack that’s out there‚” [Siebel] said. “It’s very fast-moving‚ and challenging.” But with IoT‚ he predicts‚ “the economic and social benefits will be more significant than previous ways of computing.”

Read the full article here: Solving Enterprise IoT With a Platform: C3’s Approach