Azure Digital Twins are the virtual counterparts of systems, sensors or even complete factories in the real world.
The Digital-Twin concept has already around for a time and I have used it in several customer projects, to get a as-good-as real-time view on the state of complex systems. It comes with the additional benefit of having historical data, e.g. to follow up on errors, or predict the future with the help of machine learning algorithms. In addition, the ability to simulate and test possible future situations or different development scenarios with a close-to-reality model, cannot be overrated!

While these custom implementations are working great, it must be admitted that there is significant effort necessary to reach this goal.
Due to this, I consider Azure Digital Twins as the arrival of a game changing platform service for future IOT solutions. Azure Digital Twins save a lot of development effort, are very good integrated with other Azure IOT offerings such as IOTHub, IOT Central and build on IOT Plug & Play. This is taking the fast lane !
It is a powerful combination of services, which are going to revolutionize the way IOT solutions will be built in the coming years.
The good development story behind Twins is supported by great tools for visualizing and reporting. This is something often neglected by standard IOT approaches. Any neglection in this area is dangerous, because capable reporting and querying functionality is essential to run, maintain and evolve your solutions in field.

I predict the Azure Digital Twins will be seen quite often in upcoming solutions.
🙂

Alexander