In Episode 181 of the IoT Use Case Podcast, host Ing. Madeleine Mickeleit talks with Markus Paluszkiewicz, Product Manager at WISAG Automation Technology, and André Lange, Managing Director DACH at ICONICS. The focus: building automation in transition – from energy-efficient operation and ESG reporting to new digital business models. The two explain how WISAG, as a system integrator, connects a wide variety of buildings – from industrial sites to hospitals to penguin enclosures – and how ICONICS, with its IoT and SCADA platform GENESIS64, provides the technological foundation. A conversation about market trends, partnerships, and real-world projects that reduce costs, improve safety, and enable new services.
Podcast episode summary
How can complex buildings – from critical industrial environments to zoos – be operated efficiently, sustainably, and securely? WISAG Automation Technology and ICONICS provide hands-on insights in this episode.
The challenge: Diverse customer groups must comply with regulations such as the Building Energy Act and ESG reporting while reducing costs and ensuring comfort – all under increasing complexity from new technologies, security requirements, and heterogeneous legacy systems.
The solution: WISAG, acting as a system integrator, relies on the GENESIS64 platform from ICONICS, marketed under its own brand name, INSCONTROL 5.0. It offers universal connectivity to 98% of all common devices and protocols (including BACnet, OPC, KNX), low-code/no-code configuration, and flexible modules for visualization, historization, business intelligence, and more. Projects range from retrofitting outdated software to refrigeration solutions achieving up to 90% energy savings, to networking LoRaWAN sensors for special applications such as penguin enclosures.
The result: Energy and maintenance costs can be significantly reduced – proven by reference projects such as the Microsoft Campus, which saved 100 million USD in ten years. At the same time, the platform creates a foundation for new digital business models such as control quality monitoring.
For decision-makers in facility management, industry, and critical infrastructure, this episode offers concrete use cases and strategies on how IoT technology and building automation can deliver real business value.
👉 Tune in now and get inspired for your own projects.
Podcast interview
In today’s episode, WISAG Automation Technology is joining us – a specialized unit within the WISAG Group. The industry here is building services. We’re talking about current market changes and new requirements that facility service providers face today. We’ll address questions such as: Which use cases are they implementing? Which digital projects are they pursuing? How does the technological implementation work, from integration to operation? And what role does partnership play? For this, I’ve invited two experts from the field: Markus Paluszkiewicz, Product Manager at WISAG Automation Technology, and André Lange, Managing Director DACH at ICONICS. They’ve both been on the podcast before, so some of you might already know them. ICONICS is the technology partner for this episode. Look forward to exciting insights and best practices. And what all of this has to do with penguins – you’ll find out in just a moment.
As always, you can find all the information about the implementation at www.iotusecase.com or in the show notes. But now, enjoy the episode.
Hello Markus, and hello André.
André
Hello.
Markus, I’ll start with you. How are you today, and where are you joining us from?
Markus
Hi Madeleine, I’m doing great. Today I’m working from my home office, so I can give you the full bandwidth. In the office, a bit of that always gets taken away. Right now, I get to look out into my garden, and I’m looking forward to the weekend that’s almost here.
Fantastic. When you say you’re looking into the garden, that means you’re in your home office. Where are you normally based when you go into the office and work with your colleagues?
Markus
Our branch is in Bochum, right in Bochum-Gerthe, so centrally located in the Ruhr area. I live only a few kilometers away in Herne – maybe names people have heard before. Bochum is well known for football.
Yes, Bochum is well known. Greetings to everyone listening from the region, and of course to all others tuning in. André, how are you today, and where are you joining us from?
André
I’m doing great. You’re reaching me in Sankt Augustin, which is near Cologne Airport and part of the Cologne-Bonn metropolitan area.
Very nice – maybe we’ll even talk about the airport later today, who knows. Markus, you’re Product Manager at WISAG Automation Technology and have more than two decades of experience in building automation. You originally studied mechanical engineering, if I recall correctly, and have worked on projects ranging from execution to SCADA systems to product development. You also helped develop your own digitalization solution, which we might talk about today. My opening question for you: Is there a game changer for you – a point where it became clear that IoT in buildings is not just a nice marketing buzzword, but a real driver of efficiency? Have you experienced something like that in recent years?
Markus
Just to correct something quickly – I didn’t study at university, I’m a certified state technician. I don’t want to take credit for something I haven’t earned, and I wouldn’t want my colleagues thinking I’ve suddenly been promoted. As for the game changer: Buildings don’t necessarily change much on the outside – they might look more modern and visually appealing – but the interesting part is the technology inside. That’s getting more and more advanced. Connecting and combining that technology is the real game changer, alongside other market trends. Add to that requirements like security and much more.
Excellent. I’m thinking about the combination of technology and new customer requirements – I’ll come back to that in a moment. André, over to you briefly: You’re Managing Director DACH at ICONICS, and you’ve been in leading roles in the Industrial IoT space for almost two decades, not only in smart buildings but also in automation. You bring international sales experience and much more to the table. You were even active on the board of the OPC Foundation, correct?
André
That is correct. I can look back on many years – I actually counted earlier today. At some point, you lose track of how long it’s been. You’re right, I’m now in my 20th year at ICONICS, with 26 years in software overall, and eight years before that in classic automation, where hardware and software were always interconnected. Before that, I studied electrical engineering with a focus on automation technology. I was on the board of the OPC Foundation – that came about because ICONICS is a member and even a founding member of the OPC Foundation.
It’s also worth giving a shout-out to Stefan Hoppe, in case he’s listening, and to everyone at the Foundation. The topic of standards is very important, and maybe we’ll get to that later. Since you bring so much experience, I’d like to know: Which key developments or requirements have you noticed most in recent years, especially in the DACH region? Are they the same points Markus mentioned – combining technologies and meeting new requirements – or are there other developments that companies are really focused on?
André
The requirements have changed a bit over time, but not much. Fundamentally, there’s always the requirement to reduce costs. In the building sector – whether existing stock or new builds – that’s one of the most important topics, regardless of how it’s implemented. What’s new are topics like cloud and artificial intelligence. These aren’t our main focus today, but in recent years they’ve clearly gained momentum as trend topics.
Do most building operators today already have their own cloud or at least their own IoT platform? What’s your estimate of how many companies are already using one?
André
In my experience, the building sector is very conservative when it comes to cloud adoption. However, we work with large international companies, including automotive manufacturers, that have now moved their building applications to the cloud. This has only happened in the last twelve months. The idea is to reduce on-site infrastructure and lower IT costs. In this approach, it’s not the local control systems that are moved, but purely the software is relocated to the cloud. This topic is now starting to gain momentum. Smaller companies and operators of commercial buildings still struggle with it. I rarely see private cloud environments – most use the large hyperscalers.
Very interesting. For anyone interested in the automotive sector, there’s also an episode with ICONICS – that’s episode 110 – featuring the Head of IT at Continental, specifically ContiTech. Highly recommended, so be sure to check it out. But now let’s talk about you, WISAG. You are the largest service provider for real estate, industrial buildings, airports, and much more, with over 50,000 employees in the group across Europe. You don’t offer standard products, but rather customized solutions and, above all, services. Markus, can you walk us through the role your building automation unit plays and what this has to do with IoT?
Markus
WISAG is a service provider – and you have to carry that in your heart: providing service to the customer. Our aim is to free the customer from their secondary processes and support them there. The interesting part is the overlap: on the one hand, we deliver services, and on the other, we bring in technology, especially in building automation. That’s what makes it so interesting. We network systems and continuously optimize them. For me, that’s the link between IoT, typical buildings, and services – an exciting mix that requires great people and specialists.
When you talk about services, can you give an example? For instance, what do you do for an airport operator or other clients?
Markus
With 50,000 employees, I’m not familiar with all areas of WISAG in detail. We deliver countless services, and listing them all here would go beyond the scope of this conversation. At an airport, to pick up on your example: of course, we don’t fly ourselves, but we provide services around the aircraft. This includes, for example, de-icing, cleaning the buildings, and all the logistics to ensure baggage gets to where it needs to go. Airports are just one example – we also operate buildings in many other areas of facility management. That’s our core business, along with supporting industrial customers with their secondary processes. Personally, I work in building automation. We are an independent company within WISAG, operating nationwide in Germany with around 200 employees, and we’ve been doing building automation for 40 years – meaning everything that involves technology in and around a building.
Just because it came to mind: if I’m on a plane next time and it’s snowing, WISAG actually has a dedicated unit that takes care of de-icing aircraft so they can take off quickly. But that has nothing to do with you, right? Your unit is building automation. Does it have its own name?
Markus
Exactly, that’s right. We are the Automation Technology unit. WISAG consists of many individual companies, and we belong to the industrial division. That’s for historical reasons.
To understand it concretely: do you also have an example from the building world of the services you provide there? Feel free to give a specific example.
Markus
We have two broad areas. One is plant engineering – meaning we work together with other companies to build new facilities from the ground up. The other is the refurbishment of existing buildings – here we modernize and optimize, often with the goal of reducing costs, as André already mentioned. We have a wide range of clients: commercial properties, industrial companies, hospitals, power plants, museums, and even zoos. When someone at home asks me what I did that day, I can say, for example: the penguins are doing well. In one zoo, we control and regulate the penguin enclosure. This is a challenge because it’s not typical building automation. But in the end, it’s the same principle – it’s about comfort. The penguins need the best possible conditions, and that has to be achieved with minimal energy use to keep costs down. Very exciting, and a completely different type of customer.
Interesting – that also shows the variety and complexity of the buildings you work in, from enclosures to hospitals to other projects. Very exciting, and a cool example.
Markus
Most people don’t realize that every building is unique. From the outside, many look similar, but no building is the same, no building systems are identical. That’s exactly what makes the job so varied. No day is like another, no project is the same. It’s challenging, but at the same time it’s a strong motivation to constantly adapt to new customer requirements. That’s what we enjoy at WISAG.
And just to come back to the penguins: would you say this is also a classic IoT project? You’re not connecting the animals themselves, but rather the building. Do you use devices or sensors that you connect with each other? Is this a typical IoT topic for you, or does it fall into another area?
Markus
That’s definitely part of it. My colleagues install the actuators and sensors, do the wiring, build the control cabinets, and commission the entire system. These are typical tasks, both in new builds and in refurbishments of existing buildings. This type of networking is happening more and more today. In the past, it was mainly about heating and ventilation systems, but now more and more modern technologies, such as LoRaWAN, are being used. That’s exactly the kind of connectivity we implement here.
How did you come together with ICONICS? Did you already know each other beforehand, or how did the partnership start?
André
Gladly. ICONICS has a business model that’s based on partners – in modern terms, you’d call it an ecosystem – which we’ve built up over the past 40 years. It includes primarily system integrators, but also OEMs, value-added resellers, and distributors. We’re a classic software manufacturer and don’t carry out projects ourselves. Someone has to implement the software into the customer’s application on-site, after all. That’s why we rely on partners who can successfully deliver this, with our support when needed. That’s how we came into contact with WISAG about three to four years ago. After an evaluation phase, it became clear we were the right fit, and the first pilot project was implemented.
You should probably also mention that ICONICS is part of Mitsubishi Electric now and has a new name. I believe it’s Mitsubishi Electric ICONICS Digital Solutions, right?
André
Yes, that’s correct – quite a tongue twister. Imagine someone answering the phone at the office with that name; the conversation’s already halfway done before it even starts. We’re still ICONICS, but we’ve now officially completed the name change. After five years within the Mitsubishi Electric Group, we were allowed to take on the name – and with Japanese corporations, that’s an honor not many acquired companies receive, especially not so quickly. Officially, we are now Mitsubishi Electric ICONICS Digital Solutions, abbreviated to MIDES. For customers, nothing changes: the website remains iconics.com, and the email addresses stay the same. It’s essentially a branding update that makes our belonging to the Mitsubishi Electric Group visible to the outside world. Of course, we benefit from having a financially strong parent company supporting our product development and roadmap.
Congratulations on that – I’ll hand you some virtual flowers. As you say, it’s an honor to be part of that. Still, a critical question: when I hear Mitsubishi, I immediately think of hardware. But in buildings, not only Mitsubishi components are installed. Do you still integrate all kinds of devices? We just mentioned actuators, sensors, and control cabinets connected via LoRaWAN or other connectivity. Are you free in that regard?
André
That’s a valid question customers often ask – whether we can now only connect to Mitsubishi components. Of course not. For the past 35 years, we’ve been independent and had to be able to connect to any hardware, regardless of manufacturer. We operate in an agnostic way. We call it universal connectivity. Based on existing standards, we can directly connect to 98 percent of all devices. For the remaining two percent, we also find solutions to read and write data – in both directions. Naturally, we also develop deeper software integrations for Mitsubishi devices. Everyone knows Mitsubishi’s air conditioning systems, which we will also integrate directly in the future. In the shop floor area, there are also robots, PLCs, and many other Mitsubishi devices that can already be or will soon be integrated directly into our software systems.
Very nice, thank you for clarifying that again. I’m sure that’s important for many customers, especially since a large number of different devices often needs to be integrated. Let’s move on to a joint project. I’d like to understand what you’ve actually implemented, of course in the IoT context. Markus, this might be a question for you: as a service provider, are you currently undergoing a transformation due to new customer requirements? Can you explain what exactly your project was and what the typical challenge – or, as it’s called in English, the problem statement – was that you wanted to solve?
Markus
Absolutely. At our company, we don’t talk about a single project, but rather many projects with different customers. We are a system integrator that uses both our own products for existing customers and products from other manufacturers. Whether it’s digital inputs, sensors, or actuators – that’s no longer the decisive point for us today. What matters is how we bring these components together, program them, and configure them. We do this for many customer groups, such as hospitals or industrial companies.
These customers have very different requirements. A clear driver at the moment is the German Building Energy Act. Connected to that are the topics of sustainability and the European climate neutrality goals. All companies are contributing to these targets, and this is currently a strong market driver. Naturally, it’s also about reducing costs and meeting ESG reporting requirements. Many customers are currently investing specifically in these areas.
It’s also about improving comfort – not just for penguins, but especially for employees. For many of our customers, employees are their greatest asset, and they should be able to work under the best possible conditions.
From a technical perspective, everything must be secure. You read about cyberattacks almost daily in the news. Discontinued software or hardware poses a risk. Securing all of this during ongoing operations is a challenge. Customers in critical infrastructure in particular have strict requirements here and invest specifically to avoid vulnerabilities. At the same time, comfort must be maintained. So there are many overarching themes that interconnect.
If we stay with the ESG reporting topic – do you have a concrete example of what customers actually do in this area? You said they are investing. Does that mean they are creating digital interfaces to retrieve ESG reports? What exactly are your customers demanding or doing in this example project?
Markus
ESG reporting comes at the end of an entire chain. First, it’s about operating technical systems as energy-efficiently as possible. Then, legal requirements must be met. In addition, many buildings are not owned by the operator but often by real estate funds that lease them. For these owners, it’s all the more attractive if the building has a good sustainability certification. Examples include BREEAM, LEED, or DGNB. The goal is for a building to achieve a high standard in the sustainability report. Some customers also aim for ISO 50001 certification to demonstrate energy management processes. Here, it’s an advantage that ICONICS, with the GENESIS software, offers an extensive repertoire that can be optimally used for these purposes.
[20:10] Challenges, potentials and status quo – This is what the use case looks like in practice
André, a question for you: in the end, it’s always an investment in technology, in a project, and in a specific software stack. Do you have insights into return-on-investment calculations or business cases that show where the need comes from? I’d like to get more concrete on that level – for example, when it comes to the energy efficiency of a facility. Can your software be used to calculate ROI? Do you have insights on that?
André
Yes, there are such insights, but in many projects these calculations are challenging because no measurements were taken beforehand. You might have the annual bill from the energy supplier and want to reduce it, but you don’t know exactly where or in which part of the building or campus the energy is being consumed. This ties back to the problem statement: if I want to digitalize, I first have to electrify, then automate, and only after that can I digitalize.
Here’s an example: a customer wanted to digitalize and save costs, but still had blinds operated by a hand crank. In that case, you first have to lay cables, install actuators, and put automation in place before digitalization is even possible. Especially in existing buildings, you have to take a holistic approach to achieve real benefits.
To your question about concrete figures: many customers are reluctant to share detailed numbers because, in the building sector, there are many stakeholders – landlords, owners, tenants – each with different needs and requirements. One example where we are allowed to share figures is the Microsoft Campus. In Redmond alone, it consists of 185 buildings, and worldwide there are over 800 buildings connected in a single application powered by ICONICS software. Over ten years, they have saved more than 100 million US dollars in combined energy and maintenance costs. That’s officially confirmed and publicly available.
Do you have an idea of how many use cases are behind such a figure? That must be made up of many sub-projects – from simple starter projects to complex topics like labor shortages and digitizing knowledge. Do you know roughly how many projects that involves?
André
I don’t know all the use cases, but some stuck with me when the project was presented to me. Microsoft has its own IoT development teams that created sensors sending data directly to Azure. They capture presence, noise levels, temperature, and other parameters. These sensors look like small presence or smoke detectors, are mounted on the ceiling, and send their data via Bluetooth. By using audio levels – not the content – they can determine how many people are in a room. This provides valuable insights in addition to simple presence detection.
Another interesting use case involves the fire extinguishers on the Redmond campus. Each of the 12,000 fire extinguishers now has an IP address, a pressure sensor, and a light sensor. The background is that maintaining them used to require a full-time team. Now, the fire extinguishers are visible online. You can see if there’s enough pressure and if maintenance is needed. The light sensor detects if something is blocking the extinguisher. If it’s only temporary, nothing happens. If it remains blocked for a longer period, someone is notified to remove the obstruction. This significantly reduces costs and increases safety. Whether something like that would be allowed under German regulations is questionable, but it’s a fantastic idea.
We’re happy to connect people. I’ll include your contact details in the show notes in case anyone wants to exchange ideas on best practices. The overarching use case here is maintenance and safety. This doesn’t have to apply only to fire extinguishers – we’ve had many examples in the podcast before, such as connected lifebuoys. There are many possibilities. Markus, have you ever done return-on-investment calculations or approaches where you can say, “This is worth it” for you or your customers?
Markus
Absolutely, we do such calculations. For modernization projects, there are cases that can be calculated quite easily. For example, if you replace ventilation systems with single- or two-stage motors with motors that have a frequency converter, that’s straightforward to calculate. You have the investment in hardware and conversion, plus the digitalization. Depending on the motor size, it often pays for itself within two to three years. At the same time, the control system is adjusted so that the fan only runs as needed instead of running continuously at full or half speed.
Often, we don’t carry out these ROI calculations ourselves but work with engineering firms that are already involved in the planning phase. That’s because in building technology, it’s never just about digitalization – it’s always also about the plant technology itself. One example: one of our customers operates a very large property with buildings used for different purposes. There were several separate chillers, each supplying only a specific area. In a multi-year project, these were connected into a chiller network. To do this, long sections of piping had to be installed, and pumps had to be replaced. In the end, we programmed the entire control system with actuators and sensors. The result: in certain areas, we were able to reduce energy consumption by 80 to 90 percent, because instead of five or six chillers running, only one was in operation.
Very interesting. I still have many questions about that, but maybe we’ll go into more detail later, because examples like this are exactly what’s important for ROI. In this case, then, it was the linking of the chiller systems, if I understood you correctly.
Markus
Above all, it has to be easy for the operator in the end. The technology can be very complex, but the operation has to remain straightforward. As technicians, that’s sometimes not so easy for us to remember.
[27:48] Solutions, offerings and services – A look at the technologies used
Yes, that’s true – it has to be easy to handle. Toward the end, I’d like to return to your implementation and understand exactly how you approached it. We just heard the word GENESIS – I’d like to hear a bit more about the software itself, but also how you use it in practice. Markus, how do you use GENESIS in your day-to-day work? I believe the full name is GENESIS64.
Markus
GENESIS64 is the platform from ICONICS. We market it to our customers under our own brand name, INSCONTROL. This name comes from our company’s history, and we are now in its fifth generation – INSCONTROL 5.0.
So you’ve basically branded it for yourselves and your customers.
Markus
It’s not really white-labeling, but simply our own brand name, because our existing customers know it. We feel comfortable with it, as it gives us our own identity. Technically, it’s 100 percent GENESIS – we haven’t changed anything about it. The frontend, however, comes from WISAG, and it contains our know-how and our own libraries. These can’t be as standardized as with machine visualization because we need to be very flexible. No building or plant is the same.
We have different connectors that need to be integrated – for example, BACnet, OPC (as André mentioned earlier with the OPC Foundation), or KNX. We integrate these into our library. With this setup, we design the frontend and the user interface. Our customers work with INSCONTROL 5.0 or GENESIS on a daily basis to operate and control their systems.
In our field, we call this a management and control unit. ICONICS is our only partner here, and we feel very comfortable in this collaboration. We reach out to our existing customers when their current software is discontinued or no longer receives updates, and then recommend a retrofit — replacing it with our INSCONTROL 5.0. For new builds, we offer it from the start and implement it directly.
I see. André, maybe the question for you again: GENESIS was just described as a platform. You’re generally active as a software provider. How would you describe the features of your IoT platform? “IoT platform” is initially a very generic term – what functions, capabilities, and services does your platform actually provide?
André
“Platform” is indeed the right term. Over the past few years, we’ve seen many market players come and go, even though they also called themselves platforms. Right now, we’re seeing a market shakeout among hyperscalers and other providers. GENESIS has been on the market for over 35 years – of course, in a constantly updated form.
You can think of GENESIS as a universal, flexible toolbox, where you use the right modules depending on the requirement – or not. Examples include the frontend functions Markus described as a management and control unit. The system is certified according to the latest BACnet standard, at the highest level, the BACnet AWS certification (Advanced Workstation). This allows us to connect directly to BACnet devices, read and write data, which greatly simplifies project planning.
Modularity is a key advantage. If I want to see time series, I use the time series module. If I want to historize data, I use the historian module. For visualizations, there are display modules, and for business intelligence, there’s a BI module that’s easy to parameterize.
GENESIS offers a low-code/no-code interface, so no traditional programming is required. But if a use case goes beyond the standard, there’s still the option to integrate custom scripts. This makes the platform highly flexible and adaptable to a wide range of requirements.
Okay, so on the OT side – the automation layer – you essentially connect any hardware, whether it’s for a penguin enclosure or a campus like Microsoft’s. On the IT side, I’d like to follow up: Markus, at the beginning you said it’s about networking, combining, and parameterizing technology. How do you handle integration? For example, if Azure is being used – do you work directly with hyperscalers, integrate everything yourselves, or do you cooperate with others? How does this layer work?
Markus
When our customers are ready – and some are, while others aren’t – they usually already have a clear idea. In that case, the application is integrated directly into the existing infrastructure, such as into existing data centers or cloud environments. This is relatively easy to do. We then support them with the installation and, above all, with parameterization, which is our core business. Many customers are already very familiar with integration themselves or also use the support of ICONICS. There’s a lot of know-how in that.
André
To add to that – GENESIS can basically be installed either on-premises, meaning on a local computer, or in the cloud – regardless of whether it’s Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or a virtualization in their own data center. The software is identical in all environments and can be used anywhere. We have customers who run it the traditional way on a local computer, just as we have customers with a full Azure or cloud installation.
[33:49] Solutions, offerings and services – A look at the technologies used
Yes, very nice. All right. And maybe the very last question for today before we wrap up the session. I’m also a bit curious about the future – where you’re heading and what might be coming next. Do you have any new features planned? Maybe for your software, INSCONTROL 5.0? So, are there any new features in the pipeline?
And André, as a follow-up question for you: GENESIS64 – is it evolving? What’s next? Those are my final two questions for today.
Markus
Exactly. We are currently developing digital business models step by step. That’s a topic we’re working on intensively in order to look ahead into the future. WISAG has set itself the corporate goal of driving digitalization forward consistently by 2030 – and we’re part of that, both internally and with our customers.
One example we’ve already tested is a control loop quality monitor. This determines the quality of a control loop. You can think of it like temperature control at home: you set a desired temperature on the thermostat, and the heating adjusts accordingly. In large buildings, there are hundreds or even thousands of such control loops. We want to optimize these, record the data, analyze it, and derive improvements from it.
This serves as a quality tool on the one hand, and as a cost-reduction tool on the other. A poorly tuned control loop that constantly overshoots or undershoots consumes a lot of energy, increases wear on the control technology, and reduces comfort. It also means significantly more work for our own teams during operation. With the monitor, we want to optimize that – not only for our own systems, but also for control loops from other vendors. This creates a win–win situation for us and our customers, who can make use of such a digital service.
Very nice. André, what about you? How are your products evolving?
André
As a technology manufacturer, we keep a very close eye on how technologies evolve and get involved where it makes sense. At the beginning, I already mentioned that our current priorities are cloud, security, and AI. We have a clear product roadmap for this. GENESIS64 will continue to be developed – but we will remove the “64” from the name. Originally, it stood for 64-bit, which was relevant when it was introduced in 2008. But who knows, in the future we might be talking about 256 or even 1024 bits. In the upcoming version 11, the product will simply be called GENESIS.
From a technical perspective, we are moving toward Docker capability to achieve operating system independence and become natively cloud-enabled. This will also open up new business models. We want to give customers like WISAG the ability to offer their own SaaS models – not just selling software, but also running it as a service.
In the area of security, we have invested heavily in .NET 8, removed all legacy components, and switched to the current Microsoft standard. This increases security comfort on top of encrypted communication, secure authentication, and other standards.
Another focus is AI. We already have standalone modules from our parent company that work with the ICONICS software. We want to integrate these more deeply – for example, for anomaly detection in time-series data. This is not necessarily about complex AI, but often about algorithms and mathematical models that deliver concrete value. The first results in this area will be available later this year.
Yes, that almost calls for a follow-up. Maybe we can do an update in a year to see which of these things are already working in practice. We’re also keeping a close eye on AI, because even though it’s a big hype right now, there are already areas where it works and others that are still in pilot stages. It would be exciting to see what becomes established.
From my side, thank you very much for today’s session. We’ve had some very interesting use cases – from the fire extinguisher with an IP address to measuring audio levels in a room, to WISAG’s chilled water plants that were connected together. All concrete examples of how IoT solutions can be implemented with real business value. Thank you for this hands-on presentation. Listeners, feel free to connect with André and Markus on LinkedIn – you’ll find the links in the show notes. And subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t yet. Many thanks to both of you, and I look forward to seeing what’s next. The final word goes to you.
Markus
I’d like to thank you, Madeleine, and also André. This was my first podcast that I actively participated in. A great experience, and I really enjoyed it.
André
I can only agree. Thank you, Madeleine, and thanks also to Markus.
Very nice. Then I wish you both a great rest of the week. Take care, bye.
André
Bye.
Markus
Bye.


