GE is working on a customized cloud-based service dubbed Predix Cloud, which will aid industrial customers.
On Wednesday, Aug. 5, GE announced that it was launching Predix Cloud to address the requirements of customers in the health care, energy, aviation and transportation sectors. The cloud service will have the distinction of being the first-ever and only cloud solution that caters to analytics and industrial data.
Predix Cloud is based on the Predix OS, which GE has developed previously for software deployed by its customers.
"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," noted Jeffrey Immelt, GE's CEO. "We look forward to partnering with our customers to develop customized solutions that will help transform their business."
The platform-as-a-service (PaaS) from GE will not only capture but also assess the novel volume, variety and velocity of the machine data. This will be done within the boundaries of a secure and robust environment.
The company says Predix Cloud is akin to a "gated community," which is meant only for industrial users, when compared to a public cloud infrastructure that can be accessed by anyone.
With the industrial customers benefiting from digitalization, the end-user will be profiting from more streamlined and faster services.
The announcement may perturb Amazon since GE is poised to eat into the latter's cloud computing share. However, unlike Amazon's AWS, which is open to companies and individuals, GE's Predix Cloud will focus only on the industrial sector.
The company anticipates that Predix Cloud will not only help fuel the growth of Industrial Internet but also aid developers in creating, using and managing services and apps for the sector swiftly.
By 2020, GE expects nearly 50 billion machines to be linked to the Internet. The company also anticipates software revenue to increase from $4 billion in 2014 to $6 billion in 2015.
GE claims that it is pumping in $500 million in software every year, which includes its spending on Predix Cloud.
Photo: Darkan Turas | Flickr
