New CTO for Siemens Digital Industries

Business news | May 7, 2021

Dr Dirk Didascalou to join Siemens Digital Industries as Chief Technology Officer from September

By Nick Flaherty

Dr Dirk Didascalou is to join Siemens Digital Industries as Chief Technology Officer, coming from Amazon Web Services.

Didascalou was Vice President for the Internet of Things at AWS, based in Seattle, Washington, USA. In his new role at Siemens Digital Industries, he will report directly to CEO Cedrik Neike and lead the overall technology and architecture strategy for DI. Based in Germany, he will also have work across the wider Siemens organisation on the IoT board, driving digital change across the company.

He will also oversee strategic industrial engagements with partners and joint customer initiatives, for example in the automotive industry. The DI division includes Siemens EDA alongside integrating technologies such as AI, edge computing, industrial 5G, autonomous handling systems, blockchain and additive manufacturing. It also includes the MindSphere cloud-based, open IoT operating system for Industry 4.0 as well as digital twin modelling.

“We are very excited to welcome Dirk – an accomplished technology executive and exceptional leader – to the Siemens team,” said Cedrik Neike, member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO of Digital Industries. “With two decades of experience in R&D, deep technology expertise in mobile communications, cloud computing and hyperscale architecture, software-as-a-service (SaaS), and IoT solutions, he is the right leader to further accelerate our strategy of merging the digital and the real worlds. He will be advancing our innovation ecosystem together with our customers and partners.”

Before AWS, Didascalou was Corporate Vice President Technology at Microsoft, having joined with the acquisition of Nokia Corp.’s Mobile Phones entity, where he held various leadership positions in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Beijing, China, most recently as the Senior Vice President R&D responsible for worldwide engineering

“I have seen Industrial IoT make a significant impact on many customers as they undergo digital transformation to be data driven and move at the speed of software. Siemens is both an automation and industrial software leader with a strong engineering culture, and I look forward to joining them and helping lead this digital transformation for industrial customers, large and small,” said Didascalou.