Aveva Group sees opportunity to utilise MSPs with domain knowledge

As third-party service partners transform themselves and cross over into operational technology (OT) or information technology (IT), partners are adopting newer business models to include artificial intelligence (AI) and data integration – something Schneider Electric-owned Aveva Group wants to harness.

Aveva head of digital portfolio strategy Tim Sowell and vice president of Pacific Alexey Lebedev explained to ARN that the software vendor specialises in solutions for engineering, industrial and manufacturing sectors.

Aveva is extending its existing install base, particularly its Aveva E3D Design, PI System and SimSci, to build a common platform that enables partners to provide domain expertise in specialised knowledge like pump optimisation, rather than just delivering customised solutions for it.

“We see ourselves as providing an information Connect Platform,” said Sowell. “We’re building blocks on top of that, which we’d call the purple Aveva blocks, where we encapsulate that experience 50-year experience into agents or components.”

Sowell said partners are important in this because Aveva can’t build all domain knowledge and wants to enable them to build out those solutions.

One of the reasons for this is because its partner network is also changing. For example, Sowell explained, traditionally it used partners like system integrators and engineers to take its software, like SimSci and PI System, and customise it to their end-user’s specific environment.

“That’s what they’ve done in the past,” said Sowell. “In doing that, traditionally on-premises, they’ve actually built a lot of reusable tools for many of those customers.

“As we transform [and] they transform as well, those are going to become more services [and] they’re going to supply those [solutions] as reusable services, [such] as solution-as-a-service. It’s taking their domain, building on top of ours and building out that application.”

They may even go to an expertise-as-a-service level because a lot of the partners with domain expertise can also provide advice to customers, Sowell said.

An example of this is gold mining company Harmony Gold, based in South Africa, which has some of the deepest gold mines in the world, but one of the problems it faced was that it didn’t have the expertise around pump optimisation internally.

“They’ve actually gone to a third party outside the company with that expertise,” said Sowell. That third party, who used to be a system integrator, has now built that out as a reusable set of knowledge.

“In the old days, they used to export the data out of their historians and send it over to them in a format, [like] an Excel sheet. Now, they’re getting access directly to Harmony and that third-party is now a part of their trusted knowledge team.”

For Sowell, this is how he sees third-party partners evolving; from traditional service providers into trusted sources of domain experts.

“We’re seeing our partners go through a bigger digital transformation, as are our customers, as well as us,” he said. “A lot of our system integrators are going to transform into this knowledge grouping as we go forward.”

Sowell said Aveva wants to be able to harness these early partners that are going through that transformation journey because that domain knowledge will provide the acceleration customers need in the speed of which it operates.

According to Lebedev, that service or expertise it envisions partners to be selling then goes to be part of a Connect Platform community.

“Partners will be using Connect as a platform working with Aveva tools and beyond agnostic to other solutions,” he said. “We do have partners who already subscribed for Connect and are working with the Platform as well.

“We will definitely have partners who understand we do have that implementation ingredient and they’re shifting their paradigm by developing their solution.”

However, this won’t be a packaged solution, noted Lebedev, and will be an expertise with that function partners have traditionally worked on PI System.

Bye to the on-premises world

According to Sowell the market has also transitioned from a perpetual business model to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) and subscription-based model.

Now, it’s about scaling expertise and solutions globally through cloud platforms, partnerships and reusable services, said Sowell.

“If you look at PI, that’s been an industrial platform,” said Sowell. “[Partners have] gone and actually built solutions on top of that for utility companies.

“Traditionally that was on-prem, but now there’s a look at how to encapsulate that on a global basis. The problem with the on-premises world is that it kept companies local.”

This is fundamentally changing the way partners need to operate because they now have to figure out how they fit into the subscription business model and is a huge shift for those who’ve traditionally delivered project-based work, noted Sowell.

Companies that still depend on licensing are facing challenges, as the new focus is on offering industry-specific solutions through platforms and turning those solutions into services, said Lebedev.

“Instead, partners need to combine their solutions with industry knowledge and bring them onto a new platform, turning them into services,” he said. “Storing your IP and knowledge within your organisation is also part of the challenge, but it’s the new business model.

“For companies with industry expertise, we see a contrast. In Europe, some companies told me their engineers are booked for the next nine to 12 months with a pipeline of projects, meaning they don’t need to focus on selling. This is the opposite of what we experience in other parts of the world, where there is a skill shortage, especially in Australia.”

Disruptive change

As a result of this, it’s no longer just about customer productivity, but also about productivity on the partner side.

“Partners need to speed up implementation and make the most of their expertise,” said Lebedev. “This can no longer be in the form of packaged solutions but needs to be about finding faster ways to deliver.”

AI has also been a disruptive force, but if partners embrace this new world, he noted, the need for licensing is minimal, or even non-existent, as they can offer solutions based on a platform that belongs to the customer.

“Customers can then purchase these solutions on a subscription basis from the vendor, completely removing licensing from the equation,” Lebedev said. “This is a big shift and while it’s a challenge, it confirms the direction the industry is heading.”

Sowell believes that this was particularly important as the IT world starts to merge with OT and vice versa.

“Then, as we bring also internet of things into the space, which is another dimension, and engineering into IT – you’re now starting to see traditional EPCs [engineering, procurement and construction] also in the sectors and operating,” he said.

Aveva itself has gone through its own transformation since it was created in 1967, originally starting out as the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) Centre based in England and created by the UK Ministry of Technology and Cambridge University.

It then became a private company in 1983 and officially changed its name to the CADCentre.

After several acquisitions spanning over 40 years and a name change to Aveva in 2001, the company was merged with Schneider Electric in 2018 and was fully acquired by the company in 2022.