Why Open Infrastructure Engineering Matters

Does the future of infrastructure engineering need to be open? Peggy Smedley sits down with Greg Demchak, vice president of emerging technologies at Bentley Systems, to unpack why open standards, open-source technology, and APIs (application programming interfaces) are essential for the next generation of infrastructure. He says openness is about agreeing to a standard that enables interoperability between systems. They also discuss: · What open really means in an infrastructure context. · The hidden cost of vendor lock-in and why data portability matters across an asset's lifecycle. · How Bentley's iTwin platform and iModel open schema enable a vendor-neutral, single source of truth. · The role of AI agents and MCP (model context protocol) in the future of infrastructure engineering. · Bentley Labs experiments with agentic software development. · Why governance and cybersecurity are essential with critical infrastructure. · The next frontier for generative AI and infrastructure. https://www.bentley.com/en/connected-data-unlocked-value/