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ThingWorx

Score8 out of 10

16 Reviews and Ratings

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What is ThingWorx?

ThingWorx is an IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) development platform acquired by PTC in 2014 and merged with Axeda Machine Cloud in the same year, to expand PTC's development offerings.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features ThingWorx has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 16 ratings of ThingWorx's features
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Top Performing Features

  • IoT Device Management

    Software for provisioning configuring, troubleshooting and managing IoT devices and gateways remotely.

    Category average: 8.5

  • IoT Integration

    Software integration and APIs to support business processes and applications.

    Category average: 8

  • Device Security

    Security to prevent connected devices from being hacked or compromised.

    Category average: 8.3

Areas for Improvement

  • IoT Data Management

    Support for ingesting edge data and storing it to enterprise platforms, providing data accessibility, and managing data flows.

    Category average: 8.4

  • IoT Analytics

    Rich analytics to transform large quantities of sensor data into actionable insights.

    Category average: 7.8

Reviews

What users are saying about ThingWorx.
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Purpose-constructed IIoT platform

Incentivized
Kesha ParikhView profile
Senior Software Engineer in Information Technology at Accion Labs (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used Thingworx an IoT solution to improve the efficiency of our client's industrial processes. Thingworx used to reduce the amount of effort and complexity involved in integrating third-party apps by developing and deploying Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) solutions that accelerate time to market. Thingworx featured with its own framework - Thing Model Framework. Which provides effortless integration with other technologies and tools, such as ThingWorx Studio, Kepware.

Pros

  • less coding efforts
  • supported with augmented reality
  • remote monitoring
  • data security
  • built-in core tools

Cons

  • wide range of functionalities are offered, which requires time to understand

Most Important Features

  • various features to represent data
  • cloud, on-premise or hybrid model included
  • SDKs and REST APIs available

Return on Investment

  • increase operational efficiency
  • reduce cost

Other Software Used

MongoDB, Oracle Java Cloud

Industrial Connectivity, Data Visualization and Analytics All-in-one suite

Nathaniel SmithView profile
Smart Manufacturing Lab Graduate Research Assistant in Manufacturing at BYU Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering, Smart Manufacturing Lab (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use ThingWorx as a means of industrial connection and control of model manufacturing systems for research into the implementation of industry 4.0 strategies and technologies in the modern factory. Primary functionalities used are the industrial connections established by Kepware, the data visualization and control achieved through ThingWorx mashups, and the data analysis functions that allow us to make our data valuable and usable. In our lab, ThingWorx controls and monitors six-axis robots and model manufacturing demonstrators which contain various robotic and motor actions, vision systems, and other sensors.

Pros

  • Facilitates industrial connections between equipment of different protocols.
  • Visualizes data in a quickly readable and valuable format with minimal coding.
  • Provides easily usable data analytics functionality that can feed back into the system.

Cons

  • Advanced functionality in control and data visualization often requires additional coding from the user.
  • Support and tutorials provided are often lacking in detail or are not readily transferable.
  • Mashup development works poorly on small monitors or laptops.

Most Important Features

  • Kepware industrial connectivity.
  • ThingWorx mashup data visualization.
  • ThingWorx data analytics functionalities.

Return on Investment

  • The use of ThingWorx as a near-complete, full-stack industry 4.0 solution has been at the forefront of recent and ongoing research.

End To End IoT Platform Product

Incentivized
Dilip kumarView profile
Senior Application/Cloud Analyst in Information Technology at Accenture (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We looked for an end-to-end IoT solution where we will be able to perform the total use case of the project. It gives us the capability, readiness of the software to establish quick growth and definitely saves time to develop the product. This basically made our work very easier in terms of development, deployment, usability, enhancements, etc.

Pros

  • Automating the whole business process
  • It utilizes IoT ecosystem to the maximum level.
  • Digital transformation is easily done.

Cons

  • Customer support
  • Trial subscription should be increased
  • Should be developed in order to integrate few more modules

Most Important Features

  • Automation
  • Less code
  • End to end platform for an IoT project

Return on Investment

  • Very positive on saving time
  • Very positive on saving cost
  • Less positive on the support

An ultra-versatile IoT software platform.

Incentivized
Pranav GoelView profile
GDG Chandigarh Member in Engineering at GDG Chandigarh (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it to deploy such solutions in the most varied types of customers, from pulp & paper, consumer goods, heavy industry, and whatever industry you can think of. It's mainly focused on monitoring asset health, optimizing processes through the analytics extension, and providing plant-level alerts for faster decision-making. ThingWorx is great if you want to create an MES-like solution for your company, but have data coming not only from the plant floor, but also from databases, azure, and others.

Pros

  • Quick monitoring of extraordinary behaviour of a monitored component
  • As the Kepware tools and libraries have become more integrated, the platform has an unrivalled set of interface solutions.
  • Modelling is simple enough to explain to non-specialists but very powerful in its expression.

Cons

  • It's difficult to delete entities once the network becomes large and complex. N+Maintaining synchronicity between multiple devs and productions systems has to be carefully managed.
  • Difficult to manage a complicated system
  • MQTT interface needs improvement

Most Important Features

  • Aggregation of data from production controllers
  • The ThingWorx modeling is simple enough to explain to non-specialists but very powerful in its expression.
  • As the Kepware tools and libraries have become more integrated, the platform has an unrivaled set of interface solutions.

Return on Investment

  • Good for quick test of IoT platform
  • Successful is a use case in preventive maintenance (health monitoring of production assets on selected production lines).
  • Good for quick deployment of customer specific control of IoT

Alternatives Considered

Google Analytics, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Cisco Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul (formerly Fluidmesh) and Microsoft Power BI

Other Software Used

Jira Software, Google Analytics, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

A One-Stop Shop for your needs in Digital/MES/IIoT solution, ThingWorx brings live data to the cloud and beyond

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

ThingWorx is a solution-focused on IIoT, helping companies transition into the digital world. Through Thingworx and its modules, we can connect live data on the plant floor to the platform on the cloud, monitoring assets' health and its functioning. All through secure protocols that are always updated. We use it to deploy such solutions in the most varied types of customers, from pulp & paper, consumer goods, heavy industry, and whatever industry you can think of. It's mainly focused on monitoring asset health, optimizing processes through the analytics extension, and providing plant-level alerts for faster decision-making.

Pros

  • Asset Monitoring - quick and easy to deploy, can connect to the plant floor and get real-time data from devices.
  • Analytics - The TWX Analytics extension has a variety of analyses that can be done into any data source input into TWX.
  • Alerts notification - you can program alerts to be sent via email/SMS seamlessly.

Cons

  • UI creation - some features that one is accustomed to using reporting services are not allowed in TWX, such as within a table, directly use aggregate functions such as count, max, min, etc. You need to create specific services in order to accomplish that
  • Even when working with a SQL data source, you cannot easily create a PK that auto increments, you need to create a service to that for you, and is not that simple.

Most Important Features

  • Seamless connection to the plant floor through OPCServer called Kepware.
  • TWX analytics can help in process improvement and help customers understand the barriers their processes face.
  • Integration with Vuforia allows it to create a repository for augmented reality solutions.
  • Integration with SSO can make it easier for companies to adopt the solution, diminishing the number of times a user needs to log on.

Return on Investment

  • ThingWorx drastically increased our volume of projects in digital solutions, before TWX we used to work on 1/2 projects a year. Now we have around 10 projects running at the same time, that only in my region.
  • For customers I noticed an increase in satisfaction when talking about an MES system, TWX does a great job in being a one-stop-shop for all things MES.

Other Software Used

Microsoft SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, PostgreSQL