Last week the Barcelona Mobile World Congress trade show saw the official launch to open market of Predix, which GE had previously offered only to a closed group of customers and partners (including Pitney Bowes) last northern hemisphere autumn.
GE also announced a “digital alliance” with Intel, Capgemini and Infosys, who clearly see Predix’s big data capability as a potentially enormous revenue stream.
More than one in six people worldwide currently lack access to electricity, yet the need for energy is growing rapidly with the population expected to exceed nine billion by 2050.
Ninety percent of that growth is going to occur in developing countries, and energy use there is predicted to double.
GE currently have equipment installed in 90% of utilities globally, and 85% of offshore oil rigs use their technology. Yet they have recognised quite clearly the systems being used now can’t cope with present demands, let alone what will be needed in just 20 years’ time.
Through its new division GE Digital, this recognition has led to GE’s heavy investment in the dark side of the worldwide web, the “Industrial Internet”.
The visible side of the Net, where people live on a daily basis, shop, chat and bank will soon be dwarfed by the sheer capacity of the Industrial Internet which is, at its root, a network of machines and devices of all types and capabilities, from thermal power plants to MRI machines to air conditioning systems.
What can potentially happen within the bounds of the Industrial Internet is an ability to access the raw data of physical machinery, which then engenders measurability. Enter cloud-based platforms like Predix.
Predix has given GE the capability to collect, in a secure environment, big data from machinery such as jet engines, gas turbines and MRI machines, analyse it and feed it back to them to make them run at an optimum level.
Pitney Bowes, one of the beta customers GE exposed to Predix, used the platform to optimise enormous mail machines capable of sorting 900 million letters in a year.
The emphasis for GE is on economic potential for developing countries, for its shareholders, and its partners, as well as sustainability. It’s through the Industrial Internet, and its merging of the physical and the digital, that it sees a realistic but also profitable way to make this happen.
Speaking in Barcelona, Harel Kodesh, GE Digital’s chief technology officer and one of the architects of Predix, said “people realise that GE is not just another random company that decided to be a software company. We bring something that goes beyond software”.
“We bring the deep, intimate understanding of how the [physical] assets can become part of the Internet,” Kodesh said.
He went on to explain in layman’s terms what Predix was, and its implications for the energy industry as a whole, and for GE.
“Predix is an operating system for the Industrial Internet,” he said.
“It’s not that different from the operating system that you have in your phone or your laptop. But it can handle a lot of data coming from a lot of places at once and keep it secure. We call the huge amount of data hyperscale.
“Predix also includes features that allow you to develop and run applications that are optimised for the Industrial Internet. For example, in the energy sector, we are helping Qatar’s RasGas run its LNG plant.
“The digital system allows the operator to know much more about what’s happening in their shop. Most of our businesses are already using it, and we are starting to see the applications getting built.
“Mind you, this is a very young system, but the ramp-up rate is pretty steep.”
Kodesh estimated that in the next five years “…the Industrial Internet will break the zettabyte barrier of 1000 of 1000 exabytes”.
To put this in context, in 2009 the entire worldwide web consisted of 500 exabytes.
Many are surprised at GE’s decision to open Predix up, however they have recognised that in order to get the best and most experienced developers working on it, and therefore get the best results both knowledge wise and financially, it has to be open source.
“Marc Andreessen said that software is eating the world. We see a lot of software enhancements to what used to be industrial companies … to unlock the platform’s full potential, we knew we needed to allow developers outside of GE to get their hands on Predix,” Kodesh said.
“After all, where would the consumer app and solution ecosystem be without communities of external developers building for iOS, Android or Linux.”
On a practical front, GE is using Predix to launch Current, an energy solution with real time data and high end software and business models for commercial, industrial and utility customers.
Combining LED, solar, and energy storage, it had raised US$1 billion at startup, and has predicted revenue of $US5 billion by 2020.
