Emerson has announced “Project Beyond,” an ambitious initiative set to deliver the industry’s first software-defined, operational technology (OT)-ready digital platform. This innovative platform is designed to seamlessly integrate and optimize industrial operations, leveraging breakthroughs in software-defined control, data management, zero-trust cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence (AI). Project Beyond aims to maximize the value of automation investments without introducing additional complexity.
The rapid pace of technological advancement and industrial AI, coupled with escalating computing power demands and the sheer volume of fragmented data across industrial assets, necessitates a more efficient and cost-effective approach to enterprise-wide automation. Project Beyond directly addresses this challenge by creating a flexible, scalable, and secure platform. It will bridge existing automation infrastructure with modern technologies, enabling continuous, enterprise-wide visibility, optimization, and paving the way for autonomous operations.
Furthermore, Project Beyond will provide a consistent platform for deploying and managing new AI applications and models, alongside contextualized data. This is expected to unlock unprecedented levels of flexibility, safety, sustainability, and performance for critical industries such as energy, power, life sciences, chemical, and mining.
“Companies are eager to modernize automation and keep pace with the promise of new technologies like AI without ripping and replacing their existing infrastructure or dealing with the pain and costs of integrating new applications and millions of fragmented data points,” said Ram Krishnan, Chief Operating Officer at Emerson. “Project Beyond will use the power of software-defined control to introduce an entirely new, scalable, seamlessly integrated infrastructure with automated data contextualization to turn trapped data into powerful operational efficiencies.”
Evolving from Emerson’s industry-leading DeltaV™ distributed control system, AspenTech’s robust software portfolio, and the company’s Boundless Automation vision, this new connected industrial technology platform is engineered to reduce the costly and complex technology integration often required to move data across disparate OT systems and applications. This will empower customers to deploy and scale new capabilities at a faster pace.
