GE moves machines to the cloud

Find out more about the industrial internet platform built for unique scale of industrial data.

GE recently revealed the first big data and analytics platform robust enough to manage the data produced by large-scale, industrial machines in the cloud. Built to support the Industrial Internet and turn big data into real-time insight, the platform will benefit major global industries including aviation, healthcare, energy production and distribution, transportation and manufacturing.

Combined with the new GE Predictivity services and technologies available today, airlines, railroads, hospitals and utilities can manage and operate critical machines such as jet engines and gas turbines in the cloud – running businesses better by increasing productivity and reducing waste and downtime. This marks the first time industrial companies will have a common architecture, combining intelligent machines, sensors and advanced analytics.

GE’s industrial strength platform is supported by the new Proficy Historian HD – the first Hadoop-based historian data management software. Historian delivers real-time data management, analytics, and machine-to-operations connectivity in a secure, closed-loop architecture so critical global industries can move from a reactive to a predictive industrial operating model.

Bill Ruh, VP of the Global Software Center, GE, said, “GE’s industrial strength platform is the first viable step to not only the next era of industrial productivity, but the next era of computing. The ability to bring machines to life with powerful software and sensors is a big advancement - but it is only in the ability to quickly analyze, understand, and put machine-based data to work in real-time that points us to a society that benefits from the promise of big data. This is what the Industrial Internet is about and we are building an ecosystem with partners to save money for our customers and unlock new value for society.”

Expanded partnerships

GE and partners will continue to advance the Industrial Internet by integrating services and developing software, analytics, and cloud-based capabilities that serve diverse functions for industry. These partnerships include a global strategic alliance with Accenture to develop technology and analytics applications that help companies across industries take advantage of the massive amounts of industrial strength big data that is generated through their business operations. This alliance expands on the aviation joint venture Taleris, announced in 2012 to provide airlines with technology that predicts likely failures of aircraft parts and systems and recommends preventive action.

There will also be a strategic relationship with Amazon Web Services, who will be the first cloud provider on which GE will deploy its Industrial Internet platform. GE will leverage Amazon Web Services powerful, scalable, low-cost platform to offer GE’s customers cloud solutions for industrial applications and infrastructure.

“Decades of GE-led innovation have helped shape history, and we are excited to work with the GE team to help shape the future of Industrial Big Data,” said Werner Vogels, Amazon.com Chief Technology Officer.

“GE’s domain knowledge and R&D capabilities combined with the strength of AWS’s global infrastructure, breadth of services and big data expertise will help enable customers to solve problems in ways we haven’t even imagined yet, such as improved accuracy in healthcare treatments or extreme levels of energy efficiency.”

Bigger and faster data

GE’s platform is the first that can truly manage industrial big data, which is far more complex than other types of new and emerging content and information available today.

According to Defining and Sizing the Industrial Internet and The Industrial Internet and Big Data Analytics: Opportunities and Challenges by The Wikibon Project, industries have been slower than enterprises to take advantage of cloud environments because industrial big data has unique requirements and managing this complex data requires enormous computing power.

According to the new report, industrial data will grow at two times the rate of any other Big Data segment within the next ten years. Intensive machine-based software and services – including capturing sensor data, performing local processes and industrial analytics in real-time, and distributing data to end points – are required to deal with this massive growth in Industrial high-data output. Wikibon estimates that the total Industrial Internet Technology Spend will reach $514 billion by 2020.

Jeff Kelly, Big Data Analyst, The Wikibon Project, said, “Our research found that an industrial strength cloud environment needs to meet the challenges of integrating large volumes of machine data with data from other sources while executing near real-time analytics. GE is well positioned – it has both the Industrial Internet technology and the deep expertise across healthcare, energy, transportation and aviation - to develop and deliver software and services capable of scaling and delivering meaningful insight and action from complex industrial data.”