The Buzz 1: “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow… it’s cloud illusions I recall… I really don’t know clouds at all.” (Both Sides, Now, 1966 song by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell) The Buzz 2: “Manufacturing companies are often unfairly characterized as Luddites when it comes to the adoption of technolog.…Fast forward to 2021 and manufacturing is transformed.…The cloud computing model fits this dynamic environment better than giant, complex on-premise systems that cost a fortune, take years to implement and can’t adapt to market, organizational or process changes.” (www.forbes.com) Over the last few years, as they have faced continuous disruption and new competition, Industrial manufacturing companies have embraced cloud solutions – a significant turnaround for an industry that was slow to do so, especially on the factory floor. Now they look to industry cloud solutions to help them become more agile and respond faster to new challenges and opportunities across their entire value chain. Not only are they moving core processes to the cloud, they also see modular and industry specific cloud solutions that can be easily implemented and integrated to core processes, as an effective way to innovate and scale quickly, configure complex solutions, move to new service- or outcome-based business models, and manage data from manufacturing assets – all while still running a sustainable, efficient business. We’ll ask Matthieu van Bilsen at IBM and Patrick Lamm at SAP for their take on How Cloud Solutions Help Industrial Manufacturers Transform.