Recently, Aras and AVEVA announced a new partnership to work jointly on enhancing the Industrial Digital Twin. Soon after, we had the opportunity to interview Rick Standish, AVEVA VP of the Engineering Information Management Business Unit, and Gary Patterson, AVEVA VP of Global Solution Sales, Engineering Information Management Portfolio, who worked with Aras team members to cement the partnership between our two companies. In 2022, Aras participated in the AVEVA World Conference (AWC) for the first time, held November 14 – 17 in San Francisco, California. In this blog, we’d like to share more details on the Aras/AVEVA partnership and some of our team’s takeaways from the event.

In the same way Aras is committed to complete connectivity and visibility into a product lifecycle, AVEVA intends to supply the software for a seamless asset lifecycle, from design to production to operations, supporting continuous optimization. In this partnership, Aras is entrusted with adding lifecycle management and the audit trail for the industrial information that is key to success, helping to manage the “single source of truth” in the cloud. As partners, Aras and AVEVA are teaming up to leverage a powerful combination of technologies and expertise. With cloud usage accelerating, our two companies will provide software for optimal capital project delivery and close the loop to drive design and asset optimization improvements.

Since the Aras and AVEVA partnership is focused on developing the Industrial Digital Twin, Aras technology will provide the traceability required to build a complete asset Digital Twin. This will enhance AVEVA’s ability to provide an end-to-end digital thread for engineering projects and operations, adding deliverables management, change management, traceability (audit trail), configuration management, and requirements management.

As the event kicked off, Aras CEO Roque Martin joined AVEVA CEO Peter Herweck on the main stage as part of a panel discussion on “Designing and operating sustainable industrial ecosystems of the future – the importance of integrating engineering and operations information.” They discussed how accelerating change drives the need for asset lifecycle management (ALM), which necessitates rapid access to accurate, contextualized data across the asset lifecycle. This is critical to making better business decisions and pivoting with agility.

According to Roque and Peter, data is now arguably the most valuable currency. The need for real-time data leads to increased demand for SaaS deployments that provide always-on connectivity and security to ensure users can rapidly access data and collaborate in real time with suppliers, partners, and customers.

Aras was a silver sponsor of AWC 2022. As part of that sponsorship, the Aras team presented a Lightning Talk in the Expo Theater. The presentation described the goals of AVEVA’s Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) initiative and Aras’ role in achieving them.

AVEVA’s Rick Standish and Aras’ Malcolm Panthaki gave a joint presentation on Digital Strategies for Lifecycle Management, focusing on delivering the complete digital thread built for industry. In addition, they discussed addressing challenges in engineering with a unique cloud solution and lifecycle requirements for the Engineering Digital Twin. The AVEVA Lighthouse program has several major customers interested, so stay tuned for more information. They reviewed the match between Aras and AVEVA in core capabilities and primary use cases, followed by a more detailed conversation about the Digital Twin and how it provides information mastery across the asset lifecycle.

“When we’re providing access to this holistic, Digital Twin, we’re covering everything from the discipline-specific tool, everything from simulation and learning to planning and scheduling, with our two industrial information management platforms for how we aggregate and serve data to this Digital Twin, from the engineering side and the asset information management portfolio, and from operations, and bring that together contextually through this visual layer which is giving us this multi-experience engineering and operations visualization view.” – Rick Standish, AVEVA VP, Engineering Information Management

An early software demonstration of future ALM capabilities was available at the Aras booth and at the AVEVA Digital Twin booth. This software demo showed integrations between AVEVA’s tools (E3D design tool and the AIM database) and Aras’ Innovator platform. Aras Innovator added requirements management, approval workflows, versioning of the data, and publishing the latest approved versions to AIM. During AVEVA’s Lighthouse Program (estimated to last through Q3 2023) these integrations will be expanded and productized. There was a great deal of interest in this demo and in why AVEVA and Aras have formed a strategic partnership. There is a lot more to come over the next 12 months.

We at Aras are excited by the many possibilities of our strategic partnership with AVEVA. While development of the AVEVA ALM products is underway (we are working jointly on developing these products), sales teams from both sides are collaborating closely on joint opportunities, focusing on the power, EPC, oil & gas, nuclear, and marine market segments. According to Malcolm Panthaki, who manages the relationship with AVEVA, “The first full year of our strategic partnership has proven to be highly collaborative. It has been a great pleasure working closely with the AVEVA team, leveraging the strengths of both sides to ensure success. Year 2 will be even more productive as we begin engaging with our Lighthouse customers to create the ALM products.”

To hear more about the Aras – AVEVA partnership, read the interview.