AVEVA-IMD report: 74% of industrial leaders want digital networks, but only 27% share data

Global energy and industrial companies are racing to build connected digital networks for a more resilient and secure future, but a vast execution gap driven by legacy technology and weak governance is stalling progress.

According to a landmark report by AVEVA and IMD, while 74% of leaders in such companies consider digital ecosystems a top strategic priority, only 27% report sharing data substantially with ecosystem partners. According to the report, the gap between ambition and execution leaves trillions in potential industrial intelligence untapped just as companies need it most.

Building and scaling business ecosystems

The inaugural report, jointly produced by AVEVA, a global leader in industrial software,  and IMD, the global business school, is titled Industrial Intelligence Report on Digital Ecosystems and the Future of Connected Industries, and was launched at AVEVA World 2026 in Milan on Tuesday.

In a fireside chat during the opening ceremony, Caspar Herzberg, AVEVA CEO, spoke with IMD Professor Mike Wade about the findings from over 275 interviews with leaders across 12 different sectors worldwide. Encompassing both quantitative analysis and detailed interviews with experts from the Port of Rotterdam, Kwinana in Australia and many others, the report distils how organisations can harness their industrial intelligence to build, orchestrate and scale business ecosystems.

The report reveals that while 74% of leaders consider digital ecosystems a top strategic priority, only 27% report sharing data substantially or extensively with ecosystem partners. Several illustrative case studies also emphasize the gap between ambition and execution: integration complexity, legacy systems and weak governance.

Industrial intelligence in action

The report found that organisations are increasingly seeking to construct digital ecosystems to confront higher-order business challenges - whether that is innovating faster, navigating supply volatility, or decarbonising complex global operations.

Yet, the gap between digital ecosystem ambition and execution remains wide. “With this collaboration with IMD, our ambition is not merely to understand the motivations behind the move to digital ecosystems, but to define the frameworks, competencies and leadership practices that will concretely enable companies to transcend silos and build more adaptive, ecosystem driven operating models,” Herzberg said.

AVEVA and AWS announce collaboration

During AVEVA World, the company also announced a multi-year strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate the delivery of industrial intelligence in the cloud. The agreement deepens the companies’ existing relationship and establishes a framework for joint technology development, go-to-market execution, and customer migration support across the global industrial sector.

Under the terms of the agreement, AVEVA will expand its CONNECT industrial intelligence platform on AWS, as part of its broader move to a multi-cloud architecture. By bringing CONNECT and the broader AVEVA portfolio to AWS, the two companies aim to give industrial customers a faster, more scalable path to cloud-native operations, reducing the complexity and cost of managing on-premises infrastructure while enabling new AI-driven capabilities that were previously impractical at scale.

AVEVA and IFS to advance AI-powered asset intelligence

AVEVA also announced a technology partnership with IFS to enable complex industrial organisations to connect operational intelligence, enterprise execution and strategic capital planning. CEOs Caspar Herzberg and Mark Moffat shared the first wave of the collaboration at AVEVA World in Milan: Continuous Asset Decision Intelligence. This new solution is designed to turn real-time operational and asset data into smarter maintenance, investment and execution decisions across the integrated asset lifecycle. The benefit for customers is simple: less guesswork and timelier, evidence-based decisions.

AVEVA and Snowflake to unify IT/OT data ecosystems

As a part of the event, AVEVA also announced a collaboration with Snowflake, the AI data cloud company, to transform how industrial organisations unify, govern, and activate data across IT and OT environments. The collaboration establishes a direct, zero-copy integration between CONNECT, AVEVA’s industrial intelligence platform, and Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud, enabling customers to securely access, analyse, and activate industrial and enterprise data without the need for complex data pipelines or costly integration projects.

“Industrial customers need fast, secure access to trusted data across operational, engineering, and enterprise domains to support decision-making at scale,” said Rob McGreevy, Chief Product Officer at AVEVA. “Through this collaboration, we are extending our cloud-scale intelligence capabilities and enabling data to be accessed and used without duplication, helping bring operational intelligence into enterprise-wide decision within an open, partner-led ecosystem.”