GE Showcases Partners, Products and Digital Know-How at Minds+Machines Conference

Last week at Minds + Machines – GE’s Industrial Internet event dedicated to software, innovation, and the most powerful digital industrial outcomes – the company announced expansions to its suite of edge-to-cloud technologies and industrial applications, designed to help its customers build a complete asset strategy. These additions to the GE Digital portfolio complement the key software applications that drive industrial productivity and extend these benefits through Predix, the application development platform for the Industrial Internet.

To help industrial companies get the most out of their industrial assets and drive better business outcomes, GE Digital introduced: Predix Edge technologies to accelerate computing at the edge; the Predix platform combined with Microsoft Azure, the cloud for enterprises; new Operations Performance Management software to bridge productivity from assets to operations; enhanced Field Service Management solutions to improve the customer experience; and new platform tools to simplify industrial app development.

GE Digital also unveiled new research highlighting an emerging gap between the executive outlook for digital transformation and actual initiatives companies have put in place. The survey of 250 Information Technology (IT) and Operations decision-makers found that while companies see the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) as presenting significant opportunities for future growth and competitiveness, the vast majority are not taking the actions required to benefit from those opportunities.

According to the study, optimism among industry executives for the potential of the Industrial Internet is striking. Eighty percent believe IIoT will or could be transformational to their companies and industries, while even more consider digital industrial transformation to be integral to their competitiveness. At the same time, only eight percent of those executives say digital transformation is ingrained in their businesses. Click here for additional findings.

Both announcements were made at the world’s premier Industrial Internet conference. You can watch the keynote addresses from the event here, including from John Flannery, Chairman and CEO, GE and Bill Ruh, President and CEO, GE Digital and Chief Digital Officer, GE. The event featured dozens of mainstage sessions and nearly 200 breakouts, supporting the knowledge sharing, training, and thought leadership development of the 4000 attendees.

As part of GE’s commitment to digital in the Middle East, a special breakout session entitled “Digital in the Emerging World: The Power of Transformation” was held. It featured an opening keynote by Khozema Shipchandler, Chief Financial Officer for GE Digital, as well as a customer panel moderated by Ali Saleh, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, GE Digital Middle East, Africa & Turkey. The discussion focused on the enormous opportunities for digital transformation across the region.

In the region, GE has already announced a number of landmark transformation agreements over the last year, including with Obeikan Investment Group to promote digital solutions in the F&B industry; with HPE to bring cybersecurity solutions to the industrial sector in the region; with the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia to support the digitization of the healthcare sector in the Kingdom; with Çalık Holding to establish a digital practice within the Turkish conglomerate; and with Türk Telekom to jointly approach partners around the region with digital industrial solutions.

GE has also become an integral part of the developer community in the region through hackathons – which bring together talented and innovative developers in software specific competitions – and events in Turkey, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and the UAE that focus on Predix, the only platform purpose-built to meet the scale, complexity, speed and security requirements of industry.