Trend No. 4: Digital twins
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digital twin is a digital representation that mirrors a real-life object, process or system. Digital twins can also be linked to create twins of larger systems, such as a power plant or city. The idea of a digital twin is not new. It goes back to computer-aided design representations of things or online profiles of customers, but today’s digital twins are different in four ways:
The robustness of the models, with a focus on how they support specific business outcomes
The link to the real world, potentially in real time for monitoring and control
The application of advanced big data analytics and AI to drive new business opportunities
The ability to interact with them and evaluate “what if” scenarios
The focus today is on digital twins in the IoT, which could improve enterprise decision making by providing information on maintenance and reliability, insight into how a product could perform more effectively, data about new products and increased efficiency. Digital twins of an organization are emerging to create models of organizational process to enable real time monitoring and drive improved process efficiencies.
— https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2019