Siemens Unveils Xcelerator Rapid Development Platform

Taking advantage of its acquisition of the Mendix low-code app development platform last year, Siemens has announced Xcelerator, an integrated portfolio of software, services and application development platform that can be customized to fit customer and industry-specific needs. Siemens also officially announced its name change from Siemens PLM Software to Siemens Digital Industries Software.

Xcelerator combines the full Siemens design, engineering and manufacturing portfolio with Mendix, which now includes cloud and app services for digital engineering and Internet of Things (IoT) powered by Siemens’ MindSphere cloud-based, open IoT operating system.

This allows any user (even those with no development skills) to quickly build apps and integrate with existing data and systems (including ERP and other types of software systems).

Speaking at the company’s annual media and analyst event in New York, Tony Hemmelgarn, CEO, Siemens Digital Industries Software, explained how Xcelerator ties into Siemens’ vision of the comprehensive digital twin by providing a way for end users to personalize how they view and consume the vast quantities of data now being generated.

“You don’t have to be a software developer to write an application,” Hemmelgarn said. “You can be a domain expert who is close to the problem that needs to be solved.”

The integration of all of these systems also drove the name change, which the company says “reflects the growth in the company's ecosystem and portfolio of solutions, applications, tools and services that are driving digital transformation at organizations across the globe.”

“Siemens has a long history of delivering innovation by blurring the boundaries between engineering and operational domains and bringing together the virtual and real worlds. Xcelerator continues that tradition, combining our full portfolio of software that spans from electronic design automation through product lifecycle management with the Mendix platform and MindSphere for IoT. Unique to Xcelerator is the ability to build personalized applications that can capture feedback and performance and feed those insights back into design and manufacturing—delivering on the promise of the Digital Enterprise across the discrete and process industries,” said Tony Hemmelgarn, CEO, Siemens Digital Industries Software.  

Xcelerator Integrates Siemens’ Industrial Software Portfolio

The Xcelerator portfolio includes applications and solutions for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Electronic Design Automation (EDA), Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM), Embedded Software and Internet of Things (IoT).

According to Siemens, Xcelerator bridges its entire portfolio to connect information technology, operational technology and engineering technology environments. Users can create new workflows that leverage a broad range of Siemens technology. Capital software, from Mentor, has been embedded into NX CAD software to allow experts across engineering disciplines to create new products collaboratively. Siemens Opcenter solution has been integrated with Valor software to expand the digital thread from design to manufacturing, providing continuous quality improvement, and Siemens recently integrated multiple automotive validation tools to create the PAVE360 pre-silicon autonomous validation environment.

With the addition of app services for IoT powered by MindSphere, digital engineering, and system integrations, the Mendix platform can now be used to connect product data to applications and devices. According to Siemens, “The Mendix platform offers Xcelerator customers the ability to build multi-experience apps and share data on any device, from any location, on any cloud and any platform and more quickly realize the benefits of digital transformation.”

According to Hemmelgarn, Mendix closed a gap in MindSphere. “The development of applications was the slowest part,” he said. “Mendix puts the development capabilities into users’ hands.”

“We are putting tools into the hands of people on the business side that are domain experts, and empowering them to participate in the creative process,” said Derek Roos, Mendix CEO. “We are opening up the entire [Siemens] portfolio so that it can be consumed through Mendix apps.”

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