Two companies bought by Bentley

Construction software firm Bentley Systems has acquired two companies – one in Slovakia and another one in Canada.

Bentley, which produces comprehensive software solutions for design, construction and operation of infrastructure, has bought ACE Enterprise Slovakia, which it described as a provider of innovative technology solutions to interface with enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise asset management (EAM), and geographical information systems (GIS).

ACE Enterprise has been a technology partner of Bentley Systems, and the ACE Enterprise Platform is used for the Bentley AssetWise connector.

Alexander Cimbalak, founder of ACE enterprise, said, “We have enjoyed our partnership with Bentley to provide enterprise connectors and are very excited to be part of Bentley, and also now to enable Bentley’s digital twin cloud services to uniquely synchronise with infrastructure assets’ enterprise IT (information technology), OT (operational technology), and ET (engineering technology) data sources.”

Alan Kiraly, senior vice president, asset performance for Bentley Systems, said, “ACE Enterprise has consistently overcome IT interoperability challenges for us at Bentley. Now, as colleagues, this talented team will enable us to continue to expand the scope and breadth of information that can be accessed through AssetWise and digitally aligned within infrastructure digital twins.”

ACE Enterprise Slovakia was founded in 2003, and is based in Bratislava. It has developed the ACE Enterprise Platform, which claims to enable quick, visual development and configuration of interoperability solutions.

ACE has provided solutions to interface with ERP and EAM systems for automotive, manufacturing, mining, oil and gas, and utilities.

Internet of things

Bentley Systems has also entered into an agreement to acquire AIworx Inc based in Quebec City, Canada – a provider of machine learning and internet of things (IoT) technologies and services.

Bentley said that the addition of AIworx brought advances in data collection and analysis to leverage infrastructure engineering digital twins, continuously updated with real-time contextual information, to optimise productivity, operations and maintenance.

Andre Villemaire, co-founder and president of the Canadian company, said, “AIworx has been providing machine learning and IoT technologies and services to help organisations generate, understand, and act on data so they can make better business decisions.

“The biggest opportunities we’ve worked on have to do with improving infrastructure asset performance on an industrial scale, by way of the data from connected machines, instrumentation, sensors, and communications systems – and we’re excited to dedicate ourselves to that advancement.”

He added that by incorporating its tools into Bentley’s services for digital twins, it would enable infrastructure operators to multiply the potential benefits of machine learning and IoT.

Francois Valois, Bentley’s vice president of portfolio development, said, “Machine learning and IoT technologies have created the opportunity for profound improvements in productivity and efficiency of infrastructure.

“Our new colleagues from AIworx have already been delivering on this potential, and now, leveraging the analytics visibility, which Bentley’s digital twin cloud services uniquely provide, these advancements from going digital will accelerate exponentially.”

Bentley said that since 2011, AIworx had been simplifying innovation by providing artificial intelligence, and sensor technologies and services for the industrial, aerospace, and defence sectors.