GE CIO out to prove benefits of company’s industrial cloud platform

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.<

  

  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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  This post originally appeared on our sister publication, CIO Dive. Our mission is to provide busy professionals like you with a bird’s-eye-view of the Information Technology industry in 60 seconds. To subscribe to our daily newsletter click here.