Azure Digital Twins Model the Real World

• Digital twins are software representations of physical assets, such as factories or oil refineries.
• They can simplify management of complex installations and enable simulations.
• Customers can model, visualize, and monitor installations when connected to Azure IoT services.
• However, gaps exist that require using other solutions, and some features have been in preview a long time.

As the name suggests, a digital twin is a digital (software) representation or model of a physical asset, such as an oil refinery, factory, or hospital. Digital twins can enable a consolidated “single pane of glass” approach to both management and simulations, providing features to predict Remaining Useful Life (RUL) and maintenance, and to simulate failure conditions.

Microsoft’s cloud-based implementation, called Azure Digital Twins, consists of an open source declarative language to describe such twins; a runtime service; and two visualization tools. While the Digital Twins runtime can receive data (such as telemetry) from IoT devices, it cannot issue commands to them, potentially limiting its applicability in day-to-day management of facilities.