Building an industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) digital transformation strategy - AWS Prescriptive Guidance
Targeted business outcomesIntended audience

Building an industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) digital transformation strategy

Salih Bakir, Vladi Salomon, and Asim Kumar Sasmal, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

June 2022 (document history)

The industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) refers to the use of internet-connected sensors and devices in the industrial sectors, such as manufacturing, energy, automotive, healthcare, life sciences, and agriculture. IIoT allows telemetry data collection from equipment, machines, and field devices in an operational environment. These environments are commonly subject to industrial regulations; compute, networking, and power constraints; and inclement conditions, and all of these challenges contribute to the complexity of designing an IIoT solution.

You can use IIoT data and other enterprise, IT, and operation technology (OT) data to create additional business value, such as optimizing operations, improving productivity, and increasing availability. According to The age of analytics: Competing in a data-driven world (McKinsey Global Institute study), manufacturers can use IIoT data to reduce product development costs by up to 50%, reduce operating costs by up to 25%, and increase gross margins by up to 33%. Therefore, many organizations in the industrial sectors are starting their digital transformation journey to solve business problems by using IIoT.

Targeted business outcomes

This guide helps you create a customized roadmap for your journey, from identifying your IIoT business objectives to realizing them. This guide is based on the experiences of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Professional Services team partnering with customers to help with their IIoT digital transformation journey. Using the phased approach described in this document, you can:

  • Identify business objectives, measurable key performance indicators (KPIs), and prioritized use cases.

  • Evaluate your current systems and technologies, assess the skills of your team, and identify gaps.

  • Implement a repeatable and reusable blueprint for rapid deployment at scale. A blueprint is an end-to-end IIoT system reference architecture you adopt on your digital transformation journey.

  • Prepare your organization for continuous innovation.

Intended audience

This guide is for IT and business executives, program and project managers, architects, product owners, and decision makers in OT, such as heads of operations, plant managers, operations managers.

Whether you are at the beginning or in the middle of your IIoT digital transformation journey, you can use the phased approach described in this guide to either build a customized plan for your journey or identify any gaps in your current plan.