Industry 4.0 and other digital advancements have tackled the manufacturing sector and continue to do so. This year, these technologies are on the trajectory to further advancements and widespread adoption. Tony Paine, CEO, co-founder at HighByte, says these technologies have accelerated the ability to solve a greater number of use cases, specifically across industrial sectors, driving value through an organization.
"The solutions to these use cases can no longer be static and must follow agile methodologies to continuously evolve and meet ongoing / new business requirements," says Paine. "Outsourcing projects won't decline, as global systems integrators (GSIs) will continue to be leveraged to accelerate implementation and plan for scale, but there will be more pressure to understand the scope and implementation of outsourced projects. Bringing more expertise in-house will allow for incremental improvements over time by internal staff – allowing organizations to minimize recurring costs."
Couple this with the use of generative AI and LLMs, businesses are finding success in diversifying their repertoire of technology. According to John Harrington, chief product officer, co-founder at HighByte, throughout the year, we will see an increase in AI agents to help solve real business problems.
The quantity of agents, Harrington suspects, should eclipse the number of individual applications we use today, making modern data integration and highly capable data infrastructure critical — this will require data infrastructure that not only provides orchestration but also ensures high quality, visibility, security and governance.
"Many manufacturers are moving their industrial data to the cloud, driving the adoption of Industrial DataOps and the Unified Namespace. These practices enhance the speed and agility of delivering the right data to the cloud in a usable format. As a result, 2025 will be the year manufacturing companies develop robust data strategies, implement Industrial DataOps practices, and invest in their data infrastructure to enable their AI strategy," says Harrington. And that's just the tip of the iceberg as the sector moves on into emerging technology territory and continues to grow well past the days of outdated infrastructure.
