5 Ways GE Digital Is Advancing Industrial IoT Opportunities For Partners

IoT Acquisitions And Applications

GE Digital is continuing its charge into the Industrial Internet of Things, unveiling Tuesday an array of new offerings and acquisitions aimed at helping partners rev up their IoT business.

"The opportunity for industry is now," said Bill Ruh, chief digital officer of GE and CEO of GE Digital, in a statement. "The Industrial Internet is profoundly transforming how we operate and our ability to deliver greater productivity for GE and for our customers."

GE unveiled a suite of applications enhancing its existing Predix IoT platform and revealed recent IoT-related acquisitions.

Here are five moves GE Digital made Tuesday at the Mind and Machines conference in San Francisco.

New To The Predix Suite

GE lifted the curtain on a new suite of software and applications designed to put its Predix platform in the hands of operators, business analysts, and other users in nontechnical roles.

The company said its new release is aimed at expanding the platform and growing its developer community through Predix apps and toolkits.

This release includes a new offering for digital energy management, which is designed to analyze energy use and operational efficiency use across lighting, HVAC and other systems. GE also unveiled Digital Substation, which the company said extends the maintenance optimization benefits of GE’s Asset Performance Management software to the electricity grid.

Among other offerings, GE Oil & Gas launched Predictive Corrosion Management, a new asset performance management offering that provides continuous inspection data and cloud-based analytics of pipe conditions to help operators manage corrosion-related risk, improve uptime and minimize the total cost of operations.

New ISV Program

GE Digital is expanding its channel to loop in ISVs, which will be able to help implement its Industrial IoT platform, Predix.

The company hopes its ISV program, for which it has been recruiting partners, will enable Predix to be used as the building block for new applications and to enhance various components of industrial operations, such as maintenance, content development and asset management.

The ISV program partners will have access to the Predix platform, which includes Predix capabilities, data services and security services. They also receive application development support, including training for rapid development of the application as well as preparation for the beta launch and general availability release with go-to-market support. According to GE, its ISV program has more than 100 registered partners with at least 35 actively developing a commercial industrial solution – and the company expects this number to grow.

Predix System

GE launched the Predix System, which is a distributed system of software architecture and services designed to make machines intelligent assets and bring control and analytic applications to industrial infrastructure and operations.

GE said its new set of components, which make up a complete "edge-to-cloud" offering, can run on a variety of operating systems, devices and form factors, including sensors, gateways and controllers.

"Connected machines, coupled with deep machine learning, are more powerful than anything we have seen," said Ruh in a statement. "These strategic investments in both the Predix platform and our partners continue to attract industrial companies and provide them with tools they need to embark on their own digital industrial transformations."

Bit Stew Systems

GE Digital said it has acquired Bit Stew Systems, a premier data integration platform for industrial IoT, to bring its data intelligence capabilities to Predix and other industrial solutions.

According to GE, Bit Stew Systems offers machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities that help automate the process of data modeling, mapping and ingestion, and accelerate time to value for customers.

Bit Stew's customers include BC Hydro, Pacific Gas & Electric and Scottish & Southern Energy.

GE Digital said the acquisition would help the Predix platform organize large amounts of data through efficient data organization at the edge or at the source of the data – the asset.

Wise.Io Acquisition

GE also said it has acquired Wise.io, which is a machine learning and intelligent systems company.

According to GE Digital, the acquisition will help it develop advanced machine learning offerings in its Predix platform. Wise.io's customers include Pinterest, Twilio and Thumbtack.

The Wise.io team deepens GE’s machine learning stack and will spearhead innovative offerings in GE’s vertical markets to develop its machine learning offerings, according to GE. The company also hopes that Wise.ios deep machine learning expertise will advance the capabilities of its Digital Twin offering, which is a software model of a physical entity.