Siemens and Bentley Systems have announced their formalisation of a strategic alliance agreement to drive new business value by accelerating digitalisation to advance infrastructure project delivery and asset performance in complementary business areas.
The companies will initially invest at least Euro 50 million in developing joint solutions to enlarge their respective offerings for infrastructure and industry to the benefit of the end-customers. This work will leverage new cloud services for a connected data environment to converge respective digital engineering models from both companies.
In addition to those elements of the agreement, approximately Euro 70 million of secondary shares of Bentley’s common stock have been acquired by Siemens, under a company program that will continue until such time as Bentley Systems’ stock is publicly traded.
The new investment initiatives will involve virtually all Siemens divisions. According to the companies, the major benefit will be accumulating intelligence from Siemens solutions throughout Bentley’s complementary applications for design modelling, analytical modelling, construction modelling and asset performance modelling.
As a result, the integrated and accessible digital engineering models, such as the “digital twin” viewed through an immersive 3D interface, will enable “unprecedented operational performance, visibility and reliability”. This work will converge digital engineering models: physical engineering models in their 3D physical reality context by way of Bentley’s software solutions and the corresponding functional engineering 2D models within Siemens’ solutions.
Furthermore, Siemens and Bentley Systems have identified opportunities to work together in energy management, power generation, building technology and mobility where each company can leverage their respective technology and industry expertise to bring new business value to the market. Siemens and Bentley Systems will each provide software from the other to deliver complete solutions from either company to the benefit of their respective customers in order to improve their project and asset performance through simulation and virtual commissioning.
“This move further extends our industry software ecosystem from 2D to 3D software solutions, taking the simulation portfolio in our Digital Enterprise offering to a new dimension,” said Klaus Helmrich, member of the managing board of Siemens AG.
“We’re rigorously executing our ‘digital twin’ vision from virtual planning to the real product to the benefit of our customers who themselves are driving digitalisation across their value chains. Bentley Systems’ independence, track record in interoperability and leadership in engineering- and design-software make them our ideal partner for this undertaking.”
“Only with Siemens could we so purposefully advance beyond merely linking the ‘Industrial Internet of Things’ to ultimately leverage digital engineering models for visual operations and connected infrastructure asset performance,” added Greg Bentley, CEO of Bentley Systems.
“Given our long history of sharing complementary technologies, we are very excited to now contribute so broadly to Siemens’ industrial digitalisation leadership.”