GE and Microsoft Corp. announced an expanded partnership, bringing together operational technology and information technology to eliminate hurdles industrial companies face in advancing digital transformation projects.
As part of the union, GE Digital plans to standardize its Predix solutions on Microsoft Azure and will deeply integrate the Predix portfolio with Azure’s native cloud capabilities, including Azure IoT and Azure Data and Analytics. The parties will also co-sell and go-to-market together, offering end customers premier Industrial IoT (IIoT) solutions across verticals. In addition, GE will leverage Microsoft Azure across its business for additional IT workloads and productivity tools, including internal Predix-based deployments, to drive innovation across the company.
The GE-Microsoft partnership helps industrial customers streamline their digital transformations by combining GE Digital’s leading IIoT solutions that ingest, store, analyze and act on data to drive greater insight with Microsoft’s vast cloud footprint, helping customers transform their operations at the enterprise level.
“Every industrial company will have to master digital to compete in the future, connecting machines and making them more intelligent to drive efficiency and productivity,” said Bill Ruh, Chief Digital Officer, GE and CEO, GE Digital. “Our customers are asking for us to make a deeper connection between our two companies. Through this expanded partnership, Microsoft and GE are enabling customers around the world to harness the power of the Predix portfolio, including Predix Asset Performance Management, to unlock new capabilities to drive growth.”
“The industrial sector plays an important role in fueling economies around the world,” said Judson Althoff, Executive Vice President, Microsoft. “With this strategic partnership, GE and our mutual customers will benefit from a trusted platform with the flexibility and scalability to deliver unprecedented results and help advance their business potential.”
As part of this expanded partnership, the companies will go-to-market together and also explore deeper integration of Predix IIoT solutions with Power BI, PowerApps and other third-party solutions, as well as integration with Microsoft Azure Stack to enable hybrid deployments across public and private clouds.
