Dubai – Mubasher: Germany-based Siemens has announced the launch of a new division that will cater to airports, cargo, and logistics in Dubai.
The division along with the MindSphere Application Centre, done in cooperation with digital platform MindSphere, will be located in Dubai South, near the Expo 2020 site, according to The National.
Mindsphere facilitates data analytics and works on increasing business efficiency and optimisation.
“We see this really as a growth market and we thought it's best to build it there where you have one of the biggest hubs in the world which is Dubai…We are starting that as we speak, we are ramping it up,” Siemens’ chief technology officer Roland Busch told The National in an interview late Saturday.
With operations set to begin in the first quarter of 2018, the unit is part of the German company’s focus on innovation and core technologies.
“We are locating our headquarter for airports and cargo into Dubai, driving digitalisation there…the way you optimise your flow in your airport or cargo is definitely impacted heavily by digital transformation,” the top official added.
Ranking among the world’s top 10 largest software companies, Siemens has been investing heavily in research and development (R&D), with plans to bolster spending in R&D to 8% to EUR 5.6 billion ($6.57 billion) in 2018, from EUR 5.2 billion in 2017.
The German technology and software firm has also been investing in the acquisition of other software companies in an attempt to support its position to leverage data analytics, digitisation, and automation.
Compared to 2014, Siemens has raised its R&D spending by as much as 40%.
“The efficacy of the platform will receive a boost when Siemen’s partnership with Amazon Web Services, the most popular cloud provider, comes into effect next month,” the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper reported.
“MindSphere is an open operating system. You can connect all the different dots, the energy system, the buildings, mobility under one umbrella, a sector coupling so to speak,” Busch added in his interview.
“So you can gather data, store the data and make them available for creating cases and applications. Northbound of our operating system, we have open APIs [application programming interface], any third party can use the data and program their applications on it,” he further revealed.
As for the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and its effect on jobs, Siemens’ chief technology officer highlighted that the advancement of technology “kills” jobs that are no longer needed.
“If you would have worried about the people feeding the horses and taking care of them in the past, we would never have combustion cars,” Busch said. “It’s technology rolling in, it kills certain jobs, you don’t need so many horses anymore. In these kinds of disruptive changes you always some jobs which are transformed and others which are created.”
