Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced the Public Preview of Microsoft’s next generation digital twin, Digital Twin Builder, during the keynote at Microsoft Build 2025, the world’s largest developer conference. The DTB is part of the Real Time Intelligence workload on MS Fabric. The Public Preview follows the Private Preview for this new offering, allowing organizations to start learning about the new service early. Digital Twin Builder, code-named Project Alpine Lake, has been available to a limited audience since June 2024.
During this time, I had the opportunity to work with the Product Team on Project Alpine Lake and DTB, introducing some of my customers to be onboarded early in the project. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Private or Public Previews allow participants to learn and work with the Product Teams on future products or services from Microsoft, benefiting both parties by providing education, firsthand experience with new functionalities, and the opportunity to offer feedback and suggest additional features.
Digital Twin Builder
If you’re not familiar with the concept of a Digital Twin for smart buildings, industrial IoT you may want to read my blog on ‘Digital Twins for Smart Building and Industrial IoT’. Microsoft Azure Digital Twin and now Digital Twin Builder distinct themselves from the mass claims of digital twin offerings as they are based on building an ontology based Digital Twin, not just a fancy 3D model on top of a traditional data model, that allows you to navigate through a building. Azure Digital Twin is based on RealEstateCore a well-established ontology, Digital Twin Builders allows you to use any ontology of even building your own.
If you are not familiar with the concept of a Digital Twin for smart buildings and industrial IoT, you may want to read my blog on 'Digital Twins for Smart Building and Industrial IoT'. Microsoft Azure Digital Twin and Digital Twin Builder differentiate themselves from other digital twin offerings by using an ontology-based approach rather than just a 3D model on top of a traditional data model. This allows for more comprehensive navigation through a building. Azure Digital Twin is based on RealEstateCore, a well-established ontology, while Digital Twin Builder allows the use of any ontology or the creation of a custom ontology.
Digital Twin Builder is a new component within the Real-Time Intelligence workload in Microsoft Fabric. It is designed for building comprehensive digital representations of real-world environments and processes, enabling extensive data analysis and enhancing operational efficiency.
The digital twin builder provides users with low code/no code options to construct and model assets and processes through an ontology. It facilitates data mapping from various source systems to the ontology and establishes system or site-wide semantic relationships. The tool includes pre-built visualization experiences for exploring modelled data. Additionally, it integrates with Power BI, allowing the creation of customized views and dashboards for customers, clients, and internal audiences. The low code/no code interface for building and analysing the ontology ensures that the digital twin builder is accessible to operational decision-makers for scaling operations within Microsoft Fabric's data analytics platform.
There's a lot to say about AI's ability to map data with your digital twin, support querying it, and utilize MS Fabric and CoPilot features. Contact us to discuss the possibilities.