Strategic partnership: Festo now part of the Siemens industrial edge ecosystem

The Festo AX Data access app, effective immediately, is now available on the Siemens Industrial Edge Marketplace, where industrial customers can purchase numerous apps from different providers.

Earlier this year at Hannover Messe, Festo and Siemens announced their strategic partnership. Joining the Siemens Industrial Edge Ecosystem and offering the Festo AX Data access app is the first move in this partnership.

Siemens Xcelerator, the open digital business platform, creates an open ecosystem for collaboration between customers, Siemens, and certified partners. The integrated IoT solutions based on the apps in the company’s industrial edge marketplace reportedly offer customers greater productivity, flexibility and sustainability. Siemens launched the independent, cross-vendor app store for industrial customers in October 2021. This marketplace is based on the Siemens Industrial Edge platform. It uses edge computing to process data right at its source, such as on an industrial PC in machines or plants. Effective immediately, Festo is offering data-driven AI solutions from the Festo Automation Experience (Festo AX) portfolio on the marketplace.

Oliver Niese from Festo and Rainer Brehm from Siemens present the partnership at Hannover Messe 2023. (Photo: Siemens)

“We’re pleased to offer our Festo AX Industrial apps on the Siemens Industrial Edge platform as part of our partnership,” says Oliver Niese, head of the digital business at Festo. “Users benefit from the opportunity to purchase apps from different providers in a single place, to install them and run them at the machines on the shop floor.”

Another customer benefit is the wide range of software components that can be integrated into production in a standardized way, according to a Siemens press statement. IoT solutions can even be scaled across lines and factories.

“At Siemens, we want to add even more partners to the Industrial Edge Ecosystem, especially those in the field of automation,” says Rainer Brehm, CEO of Factory Automation at Siemens. “A larger selection increases flexibility for our customers, who can build individual IoT solutions from Siemens and partner modules (Industrial Edge apps and devices).”

Festo launched its Industrial Intelligence portfolio with the Festo AX Data Access connectivity solution, which feeds data from Festo components into Siemens Industrial Edge to supply analysis applications with data. Customers can reportedly build a monitoring solution based on the data. Additional industrial apps from Festo are expected to be available on Siemens Industrial Edge, such as AI-based wear prediction for pneumatic drives.