We're all familiar with fraternal and identical twins. Words like double, dual, copied and corresponding come to mind. Most of us do not have a twin. However, now in the age of science and technology, we have a new kind of twin, a digital twin. It's essentially a replica of something physical like a person, a place, a system or device.

Oracle IoT Intelligent Applications core offering includes key digital twin elements including virtual twin, predictive twin and twin projections. In a virtual twin, Oracle's device virtualization feature creates a virtual representation of a physical device or an asset in the cloud in order to retrieve a last known status or to control operation states of an asset.

In a predictive twin, the digital twin implementation builds an analytical or statistical model for prediction by using a machine-learning technique. This model is able to detect future problems or state of a machine and can determine trends and patterns from contextual machine data. With this information, problems can be addressed in advance to prevent downtime.