Digital twins – virtual representations of real-world things – are a hot topic, and they're becoming more capable with the addition of AI and geospatial awareness. In this episode, we explain how AI-enhanced spatial digital twins work, how they're being used today, what it takes to deploy them, and their potential uses.

Featuring: Eric Liu, founder and CEO of TwinMatrix Technologies

In today’s episode, we'll also cover:

• How spatial twins differ from other digital twins

• Challenges to broader deployment
• How low-code/no-code tools could "democratize" spatial twin development

References:

• What is a digital twin?
• Advantages and disadvantages of digital twin technology

• How digital twins can help support sustainability
• Debunking the myth: Digital twins are more than just 3D models

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What separates successful enterprise technology implementations from costly failures? Here on Enterprise Apps Unpacked, we’ll do a deep dive into strategies that actually deliver results. Every other Monday, veteran IT journalist David Essex interviews corporate leaders, industry experts and vendors—the people who are truly in the know—about important developments in ERP, HR and supply chain systems and the other applications that run the business. For business and IT leaders, these conversations cut through the chatter to help them make smart decisions about how they buy, deploy and use enterprise software.

Episode 1 drops on August 11, 2025 at 5am ET. Rate and review the podcast to tell us how you like this new content. Find us on YouTube at Eye on Tech or explore our written work on Search ERP.

SAP has faced numerous challenges in recent years, but three big ones stand out: moving its on-premises products to the cloud; convincing customers to adopt its current ERP platform, S/4HANA Cloud; and meeting the unprecedented demand for artificial intelligence by developing practical AI applications.

SAP touted significant progress on all three fronts at its annual Sapphire conference, which was held on consecutive weeks this month, first in Orlando and then in Madrid. It repositioned S/4HANA Cloud ERP as a mix-and-match, AI-infused "business suite" – a throwback to the brand name of its previous ERP flagship. It augmented its primary data platform, Business Data Cloud, with prebuilt, composable applications that combine data products with AI and simulation features. And it embedded the Joule AI co-pilot in more business processes across the application suite, making it more autonomous and omnipresent as a user-friendly interface to ERP.

The result, SAP claimed, is an integrated "flywheel" of AI, data and apps that feed off each other to accelerate digital transformation.

While reaction was generally positive, it was leavened with the wait-and-see attitude that is typical after the ambitious promises and glitzy presentations of a software conference. SAP still has integration and data management work to do if the components of the business suite – especially cloud platforms like Ariba and Concur that it acquired – are to work seamlessly together.

In the podcast, three Informa TechTarget editors offer their analysis of Sapphire developments and observations from the Orlando and Madrid events: Jim O’Donnell, news director at SearchSAP; Brian McKenna, enterprise applications editor at London-based ComputerWeekly; and industry editor David Essex.

Other topics discussed include:

• how far SAP has progressed in its AI, cloud and S/4HANA migration efforts
• interviews with SAP executives and partners at the conference
• why integration with SAP’s digital adoption platform, WalkMe, could make Joule more autonomous and personalized

Host: David Essex, Industry Editor, Informa TechTarget

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An emerging technology called spatial computing combines virtual reality and augmented reality to enable location-aware digital interaction with the real world. It has big potential, but practical applications have been slow to arrive. A new offering from Dassault Systèmes, a French maker of 3D design software, could begin to change that.

Called 3DLive, the new app, expected in summer 2025, integrates the vendor's 3DEXPERIENCE product development and collaboration platform with the Apple Vision Pro mixed-reality AR/VR headset to create a "virtual" twin of a product -- an immersive, information-rich type of digital twin created in 3DEXPERIENCE -- that appears to exist in the user's physical space. The headset's cameras, sensors and tracking technology collect real-time data and allow the twin to interact with the physical world.

Dassault Systèmes claims the result is a scientifically accurate virtual twin that companies can use to test a product's viability. For example, an engineer could use it to confirm -- in actual size -- that a new piece of industrial equipment will fit in the available space or estimate the effect of heating and cooling systems. Besides product development, the technology has other applications, including team collaboration, workforce training and knowledge sharing.

In the podcast, Tom Acland, CEO of Dassault Systèmes' 3DEXCITE brand, explains how 3DLive works, shares some likely use cases and gives his take on where spatial computing could go in the future.

Acland, based in London, has held the CEO role since 2020 and has a background as co-founder or manager at various startups, including COBI.Bike, which developed IoT mobility systems for bicycles and was later acquired by Bosch eBike Systems, where Acland served as product owner.

Other topics discussed in the podcast include:

• how virtual twins differ from digital twins
• Dassault Systèmes' engineering partnership with Apple
• new capabilities enabled by virtual twins' interaction with their environment

Host: David Essex, Industry Editor, Informa TechTarget

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For two glorious years, generative AI held sway as the AI darling among ERP vendors. But impressive as Gen AI might be, it's mostly limited to generating content and not really capable of the process management and decision making needed to reach the holy grail of AI: Fully autonomous artificial intelligence.

That level of technological innovation is the promise of so-called agentic AI: smart "agents," such as AI-driven chatbots and robotic process automation (RPA), that can perform tasks autonomously, make decisions and learn from experience. In recent months agentic AI has become the new vanguard of AI innovation in business applications. Major vendors, among them Salesforce, Oracle and SAP, have eagerly rolled out agentic AI to their customers.

In the podcast, Brian McKenna, enterprise applications editor at Informa TechTarget's London-based ComputerWeekly, reports on the latest AI trends and shares his takeaways from conferences he attended this month: the Salesforce TDX 2025 developer conference in San Francisco, followed by Oracle and NetSuite conferences in London.

McKenna covers business applications, information management and cybersecurity topics for ComputerWeekly. He holds a degree in History and English from the University of Glasgow and a doctorate from the University of Oxford.

Other topics discussed in the podcast include:

• the strong similarities between the agentic AI approaches of Salesforce and Oracle
• NetSuite's more cautious approach to agentic AI
• how these AI offerings compare to those of SAP, the ERP market leader

Host: David Essex, Industry Editor, Informa TechTarget

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It's been said that the main job of a chief information officer is "keeping the lights on" – making sure an organization's IT systems are up to date, reliable and running smoothly. But CIOs of software vendors sometimes play an additional role as early users of products under development. The approach is often called Customer Zero, "drinking your own champagne" or "eating your own dog food," and advocates say it can improve innovation and quality control in products and services and boost customer satisfaction.

In the podcast, Sumit Johar, CIO of Blackline, a Los Angeles-based maker of cloud-based accounting and finance software, shares his experiences with the Customer Zero method. He also discusses the role of machine learning and generative AI in Blackline's internal IT automation and digital transformation efforts, the insights that were gained and how they affect product development.

Johar was previously CIO of Automation Anywhere, a provider of AI-based robotic process automation, and mobile security vendor MobileIron, now part of Ivanti.

Other topics discussed in the podcast include:

• the business processes where AI has the biggest impact
• why AI poses a threat to compliance and security but also offers solutions
• whether increased use of AI will cause significant job loss
• how employees can prepare themselves to stay ahead of the AI curve

Host: David Essex, Industry Editor, Informa TechTarget

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A case can be made that for the past decade and a half, SAP has been almost entirely focused on two things: getting customers to adopt its next-generation ERP platform, S/4HANA, and shifting its development efforts from on-premises systems to the cloud – and getting customers to follow.

Now, with the calendar turned to 2025, the December 31, 2027 deadline -- when SAP says it will stop supporting legacy on-premises ECC and R/3 systems, in effect requiring most customers to upgrade to S/4HANA -- looms uncomfortably near. A Gartner survey shows most have yet to make the move.

SAP enters the new year having struggled through a 2024 that presented its own challenges. The vendor underwent major personnel shakeups as three C-level executives left the company, legendary cofounder Hasso Plattner retired, and 10,000 employees were moved into strategic initiatives – primarily AI -- or left after being bought out.

SAP customers and industry analysts will be looking to see if SAP can stabilize its management structure and re-establish trust with its employees. At the same time, SAP will face more pressure than ever to show progress on getting customers to move to S/4HANA and the cloud.

In this podcast, Jim O'Donnell, senior news writer at Informa TechTarget's SearchSAP website, joins host David Essex to discuss last year's developments and their impact on SAP and its customers going forward. They also analyze the effectiveness of the Rise with SAP and Grow with SAP programs in guiding customers on a path to S/4HANA Cloud, and what SAP must do to right the ship and show more progress in moving customers to S/4HANA and the cloud.

Other topics discussed in the podcast include:

• the impact of SAP'S promise to limit major innovations to the two cloud versions of S/4HANA
• how confusion over S/4HANA migration could benefit competitors like Oracle and Workday
• whether SAP might extend the 2027 deadline

Host: David Essex, Industry Editor, Informa TechTarget

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ERP vendors have been eager to ride the generative AI wave, and it has become commonplace for them to assert that machine learning and other types of AI will revolutionize the way people interact with business applications and data. AI is already enabling natural language data queries and commands and starting to take over workflows that cross ERP modules. Chatbots are evolving from simple logic machines to become "smart" agents capable of communicating and making decisions like humans. The user interface will become so automated and abstracted from the underlying applications, proponents say, that users will rarely need to interact directly with back-end systems.

John Bates, CEO of Bonn, Germany-based SER Group, sees the next generation of software UIs as centering on the documents and other digital content that are the lifeblood of commerce. He says "sentient" documents will soon be developed that are self-aware enough to communicate what they are and the information they contain. As documents become essentially conscious, they will be able to initiate actions, remove language barriers and glean fresh insights from enterprise data. Sentient documents will be the foundation of anticipatory UIs that can figure out what users need and execute processes for them, often before they have to ask.

In the podcast, he explains how sentient documents and anticipatory interfaces will work and the important role of AI.

Bates earned a Ph.D. in computer science from Cambridge University in 1994, after which he became a tenured professor leading research on distributed computing. He has held executive positions at Progress Software and Software AG and founded startups in algorithmic trading and the internet of things. He joined SER Group, which sells an enterprise content management platform called Doxis, in 2022, and is the author of the book, Thingalytics: Smart Big Data Analytics for the Internet of Things.

Other topics discussed in the podcast include:

• why today's AI hasn't achieved true intelligence, despite the claims of AI advocates
• how the European Union's strict privacy regulations could stifle innovation
• the importance of agentic AI in processing digital content
• why people's enthusiasm for natural language interfaces is fading

Host: David Essex, Industry Editor, Informa TechTarget

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