How ABB Ability™ Genix applies AI and analytics to unlock the value of industrial data with CrateDB

ABB Ability™ Genix: Improving industrial productivity and operational excellence

Less than 20% of data generated by industrial companies is used and ABB's flagship digital solution wants to change that. ABB Ability Genix, launched in 2020, caters to multiple sectors, combining data-centric approaches with AI/ML and domain knowledge to deliver contextually rich data. It expands beyond sensors and devices to include engineering, design, and IT data, integrating them into the platform with pre-made adapters and ABB's domain knowledge.

Harnessing the power of IIoT, Genix boosts productivity and unlocks operational excellence in industrial environments. Asset Performance Management is a significant focus for ABB, with one of its biggest use cases being the ability to predict failures before they occur. By providing the integration of data sources level of insights to certain customers, ABB has seen a sustainability trend in most of its customer use cases.

The challenge: finding a scalable database

• Advanced capabilities,
• Scalability,
• Flexible deployment.

Marko Sommarberg, Lead, Digital Strategy and Business Development at ABB, emphasized the need for advanced capabilities in analytical use cases compared to traditional DCS (distributed control system) automation use cases. This led ABB to search for a database with better data aggregation, analysis, and compatibility with different data types, including hot and cold data.

ABB needed flexibility in deployment to accommodate customers with varying deployment modules, including on-premise and cloud-based, across different industries and geographies.

CrateDB is a strategic database component of ABB Ability™ Genix across industries.

CrateDB selected to be a core component of the platform

CrateDB is a powerful distributed database with excellent performance and scalability, making it ideal for modern data-intensive applications. Its ease of use and flexibility have made it a top choice for businesses of all sizes, including ABB, enabling them to transform data into valuable insights and make informed decisions.

After a successful 6-month pilot program with CrateDB, ABB solidified its partnership with the team and expanded to the ABB Genix project. The collaboration proved to be fruitful, and now ABB aims to further expand its industrial use cases with multiple clients, all with the support of CrateDB. The partnership continues to thrive, paving the way for even more innovative projects in the future.

The measurable benefits of using CrateDB

Marko Sommarberg shared that ABB had several positive outcomes while working with CrateDB: 

• Horizontal scalability has been great because ABB adds as many nodes as they need; 
  
  
• Working with a multi-model database engine, having support for both structured, semi-structured, and unstructured schemas;
  
  
• Having a multi-platform support, because CrateDB can run basically anywhere;
  
  
• Distributed query across the whole cluster automatically, the user doesn’t have to configure it;
  
  
• Data Tiering, Warm/Hot/Cold classification to optimize hardware costs;
  
  
• Ingestion and throughput, with very good performance;