GE and Microsoft announced a strategic partnership on Monday, aimed at boosting enterprises’ digital transformation.
The partnership will make GE’s Predix platform for the Industrial Internet available on the Microsoft Azure cloud for industrial businesses.
The deal underlines GE’s software objectives. The company expects $6billion digital revenue this year and $15 billion by 2020.
The partnership is important for Microsoft as it competes with similar services from Amazon and Oracle.
This partnership is expected to allow customers around the world to capture intelligence from their industrial assets and take advantage of Microsoft’s enterprise cloud applications.
Gartner predicts 6.4 billion connected things are expected to be in use worldwide this year. The number is predicted to climb to more than 20 billion by 2020.
Bringing Predix to Azure gives customers greater choice and flexibility to securely harness the power of data from machines and systems of intelligence.
“Connecting industrial machines to the internet through the cloud is a huge step toward simplifying business processes and reimagining how work gets done,” said Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE.
“GE is helping its customers extract value from the vast quantities of data coming out of those machines and is building an ecosystem of industry-leading partners like Microsoft that will allow the Industrial Internet to thrive on a global scale.”
Microsoft said Azure will support the growth of the entire industrial IoT ecosystem by offering Predix customers access to the largest cloud footprint available today, along with data sovereignty, hybrid capabilities, and advanced developer and data services.
In addition, GE and Microsoft plan to integrate Predix with Azure IoT Suite and Cortana Intelligence Suite along with Microsoft business applications, such as Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Power BI, in order to connect industrial data with business processes and analytics.
“Every industry and every company around the world is being transformed by digital technology,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Working with companies like GE, we can reach a new set of customers to help them accelerate their transformation across every line of business — from the factory floor to smart buildings.”
In connection with the partnership, a developer preview will be released toward the end of 2016.
Predix on Azure will be commercially available by the second quarter of 2017.
