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GE Says Predix Cloud Will Save Industrial Data, Analytics Operators Billions Annually

As a digital industrial company focused on answering the unique needs and scale of customers across aviation, energy, healthcare and transportation, GE has announced plans to enter the cloud services market with Predix Cloud. The world’s first and only cloud solution designed specifically for industrial data and analytics, this platform-as-a-service (PaaS) will capture and analyze the unique volume, velocity and variety of machine data within a highly secure, industrial-strength cloud environment.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 9 years ago | About a 5 minute read

As a digital industrial company focused on answering the unique needs and scale of customers across aviation, energy, healthcare and transportation, GE has announced plans to enter the cloud services market with Predix Cloud. The world’s first and only cloud solution designed specifically for industrial data and analytics, this platform-as-a-service (PaaS) will capture and analyze the unique volume, velocity and variety of machine data within a highly secure, industrial-strength cloud environment.

With $4B in software revenues in 2014 and projected software revenues of $6B in 2015, GE continues to grow its investment in software. Predix Cloud will drive the next phase of growth for the Industrial Internet and enable developers to rapidly create, deploy and manage applications and services for industry.

“Cloud computing has enabled incredible innovation across the consumer world. With Predix Cloud, GE is providing a new level of service and results across the industrial world,” said GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt. “A more digital hospital means better, faster healthcare. A more digital manufacturing plant means more products are made faster. A more digital oil company means better asset management and more productivity at every well. We look forward to partnering with our customers to develop customized solutions that will help transform their business.”

GE says Predix Cloud will enable operators to use machine data faster and more efficiently, saving billions of dollars annually. By combining GE’s deep domain expertise in information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT), GE’s Predix Cloud will deliver advanced tools such as asset connectivity, machine data support and industrial-grade security and compliance.

“A cloud built exclusively to capture and analyze machine data will make unforeseen problems and missed opportunities increasingly a complication of the past,” said Harel Kodesh, VP and General Manager of Predix at GE Software. “GE’s Predix Cloud will unlock an industrial app economy that delivers more value to machines, fleets and factories — and enable a thriving developer community to collaborate and rapidly deploy industrial applications in a highly protected environment.”

"Like GE, Pitney Bowes is in the midst of its own physical and digital transformation," added Roger Pilc, Chief Innovation Officer at Pitney Bowes. "With our APM apps running on Predix Cloud, we're able to extract and analyze data from our assets faster than ever, and use that insight to drive real business outcomes for Pitney Bowes and its clients, including lower operational costs, greater productivity and output and higher service levels. GE knows industrial machines and related data analytics better than anyone, and we look forward to continuing to partner with them on more Industrial Internet solutions."

The Industrial Internet is generating data twice as quickly as any other sector. With investment in infrastructure expected to top $60 trillion over the next 15 years, the number of Internet-connected devices will continue to swell, generating an unprecedented collection of data and analytics. Built for Predix, the cloud platform for the Industrial Internet, Predix Cloud is designed to provide a highly secure infrastructure for this next phase of growth, which will generate a new level of insight, asset performance management (APM) capabilities and innovation in the developer community.

The success of the Industrial Internet depends on a collaborative ecosystem of partners. GE’s Predix Cloud is purpose-built from the ground up, but it will also run on other cloud fabrics if required by a customer. Predix Cloud uses Pivotal's Cloud Foundry to help with application development, deployment and operations.

GE businesses will begin migrating their software and analytics to the Predix Cloud in Q4 2015, and the service will be commercially available to customers and other industrial businesses for managing data and applications on Predix Cloud in 2016.

What Makes Predix Cloud Different

Asset Connectivity: Analysts estimate that more than 50 billion assets will be connected to the Internet by 2020. Predix Cloud provides advanced connectivity-as-a-service for these industrial assets.
Scalability for Machine Data: Machines produce different types of data, which consumer cloud services are not built to handle. Predix Cloud was purpose-built to store, analyze, and manage machine data in real time. From capturing and analyzing time series data from everything from locomotives to 3D MRI images, Predix Cloud is built for the variety, volume, and velocity of industrial data.
Security + Compliance: Predix Cloud is designed with the most advanced security protocols available, including customized, adaptive security solutions for industrial operators and developers.
Governance: Predix Cloud is designed to streamline governance and drive down compliance costs for each individual user, while respecting national data sovereignty regulations globally. This enables GE, partners, and developers to more easily build and deploy services for highly regulated industries such as aviation, energy, healthcare and transportation.
Interoperability: Predix Cloud will operate seamlessly with applications and services running in a broad spectrum of cloud environments, so businesses can take advantage of its optimized security and data structure offerings while maintaining and interoperating within existing solutions.
Gated Community: Unlike public cloud services, Predix Cloud is based on a “gated community” model to ensure that tenants of the cloud belong to the industrial ecosystem.
Developer Insight: Developers will have visibility into their operating environments and every actor connected to it. In doing so, businesses will be able to deploy and monitor machine apps anywhere, continuously adjusting to new demands in the physical and digital world while providing the security and visibility required for operational effectiveness.
On-Demand Availability: Businesses will be able to easily access and scale with Predix Cloud, which will be offered through a convenient on-demand, pay-as-you-go pricing model.

More and more companies are moving their data to the cloud, which tends to reduce emissions and save energy, both in direct power costs and indirect measures, such as the reduced need for shipping and manufacturing. But it also begs the question of how these data centers are powered – if companies continue to rely on fossil fuels, any environmental benefits created by moving to the cloud are effectively rendered null and void. Recent campaigns from Greenpeace and NRG urge companies and consumers, respectively, to be more thoughtful about their sources of energy.