Dive Brief:
General Electric CIO Jim Fowler says he plans to improve productivity within his own company by $700 million this year using GE’s own Predix industrial cloud-based platform, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Predix is already being used in several parts of the company, and Fowler says he plans to deploy it across GE Oil & Gas and other divisions this year as well. Fowler intends to use his own company as a proving ground, leveraging Predix’s predictive analytics capabilities to hasten manufacturing times and make machines “smart” by keeping track of their own service and repair needs.
Developers have already built more than 100 Predix applications since the platform launched a little less than a year ago, according to GE.
Dive Insight:
GE is targeting industrial companies, which currently stand in the crosshairs of digital transformation as Internet of Things (IoT) technology ramps up. The company is betting big on Predix, its cloud-based platform that connects devices on the industrial internet, to help lead the transformation.
Fowler predicts Predix could anticipate more than 50% of the repair work needed on GE machines by 2020.
GE CEO Jeff Immelt has worked to pivot the 124-year old industrial company for the digital age. One of his goals is to make GE a leading software company, and Fowler says Predix will help make that happen, pushing revenue in the company’s software business from $6 billion today to an estimated $15 billion by 2020.
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