Why Composability is Key to Scaling Digital Twins
Right then. If youve spent any time around enterprise technology circles lately youve probably heard the term “digital twins” thrown about with increasing frequency. And if youre like most people, you nodded along whilst having absolutely no clue what anyone was actually talking about.
Let me fix that for you.
A digital twin is essentially a virtual replica of a physical thing. Could be a building, could be a manufacturing line, could be an entire wind farm. The idea is you create this digital model that mirrors the real world object, feed it real data, and suddenly youve got something you can simulate, test, and optimise without actually touching the physical asset.
Sounds brilliant, doesnt it? And it is. The problem is that most digital twin projects are currently one-off efforts. A team builds a digital twin for one gearbox, then has to start completely from scratch when they want to model the turbine that gearbox sits inside. Its maddening, really.
The Composability Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About
The Digital Twin Consortium recently released something called the Capabilities Periodic Table framework and honestly its about time someone did this. The framework organises supporting technologies into six capability categories: data services, integration, intelligence, UX, management, and trustworthiness.
Why does this matter? Because right now, according to research from Everest Group, only about 15% of enterprises have successfully implemented digital twins across multiple entities. Thats pathetic, frankly.
The issue isnt the technology itself. The issue is that everyones building bespoke solutions that cant talk to each other. Its like if every house required its own proprietary electrical system. Youd never get anything built at scale.
Pieter van Schalkwyk, CEO at XMPRO, put it rather well when he explained that the CPT provides a common approach for multidisciplinary teams to collaborate earlier in the development cycle. A “leak detection” packaged business capability, for example, could be used across oil and gas, process manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and water utilities.
Thats the whole point of composability. Build once, use everywhere.
What This Actually Means for Your Business
Gartner has predicted the digital twin market will hit $183 billion by 2031. Thats not a typo. The firms betting big on composite digital twins presenting the largest opportunity.
If your organisation is still treating digital twin projects as isolated experiments, youre going to get left behind. The companies that win here will be the ones building portfolios of reusable capabilities rather than starting from zero every single time.
Its not glamorous work. But neither is most of what actually matters in enterprise technology. The frameworks are emerging, the standards are being written, and the early adopters are already building their composable foundations.
For those of us watching from the technology sidelines, the message is clear: the future of digital twins isnt about building better individual models. Its about building systems that can actually work together. Revolutionary concept, I know.
The fact that it took this long for the industry to figure this out says rather a lot about how we approach enterprise technology. But thats perhaps a rant for another day.
