Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Internet of Things: "GE teams up with AT&T and Intel to conquer the industrial internet. Here’s its plan"

I guess GE isn't pushing the "Ecoimagination" thing as much as they had been.
From GigaOm Cleantech:
Two years ago GE made some big bets on the internet of things — what it calls the industrial internet. It opened an office in San Ramone, Calif. and started articulating a vision of connected sensors sending data to either a box on-premise or a cloud. Analyzing that data through GE’s algorithms would help GE and its customers determine maintenance schedules, when to operate at times that use the least energy, and a variety of other scenarios designed to improve efficiency and save money.

On Wednesday GE said that it has brought in $290 million so far this year from products built using this industrial internet philosophy and booked an anticipated $400 million in revenue. That may not seem like much for a company that had sales of $147.36 billion last year, but this is a two-year-old effort inside GE. GE also expanded the line of product offerings it has in its Predictivity line from 10 to 24, announced Intel, Cisco and AT&T as its latest partners and detailed its platform for building out the industrial internet, called Predix. Think of it as Amazon Web Services for the industrial internet.

GE engine

The announcement basics

  • Predix is a platform for industrial applications. Applications can be built for any system or machine — from jet engines to MRI scanners — and be remotely managed while connected to the internet. So far there are four components to the platform, for the sensors themselves, analytics, management of the connected devices, and a vague one called Predix Experience.
  • Next year GE plans to offer a developer program that lets third parties integrate Predix platform technologies into their own services.
  • Of the new partners, AT&T will handle connectivity via cellular, wireline and perhaps even Wi-Fi management techniques courtesy of AT&T’s Wayport division.
  • Cisco and GE will continue an existing business relationship to “include collaboration in industries that may include oil and gas, transportation, healthcare, and power generation.”
  • GE says it will work with Intel to “embed virtualization and cloud-based, standardized interfaces within the GE Predix platform.”
With this announcement it becomes clear that GE is following the web-oriented model of building out a platform, taking care of the hard problems associated with industrial data, analytics and hosting data in the cloud on behalf of its clients. To be clear, GE has its own servers, its own database technologies and other aspects of this platform, but this “big tent” approach will help it deliver a wider array of functionality as well as a scale that it might need as more customers get on board....MORE
You could sort of tell Immelt's heart wasn't in the eco-schmaltz when we saw:
"GE's Immelt wishes he had soft-pedaled green talk" (GE)
As to the internet of things:
"General Electric Pitches an Industrial Internet" (GE)
3D --"Immelt: 2013 Is the Year Manufacturing Gets Sexy" (GE)
"Immelt Stakes General Electric's Growth on Higher R&D as NBC, Finance Shrink" (GE) 
"Behind the 'Internet of Things' Is Android—and It's Everywhere" (GOOG)
"2013: The year of the Internet of Things"
Former Joey Ramone Infatuant Maria Bartiromo Says Bad Things are Coming to the Market
The Internet of Things: Everything Is Hackable
The Internet of Things: Huggies App Sends You a Tweet Whenever Your Kid Pees...
Will this work for the incontinent elderly? Depends.