General Electric (GE) claims to have created the first big data and analytics platform robust enough to manage the data produced by large-scale, industrial machines in the cloud.
The product, named GE Predictivity, is built for the industrial internet – a trend which brings together a number of new and emerging technology fields, such at big data, the internet of things and machine-to-machine (m2m) communication – the company explained.
The platform is supported by another new product, Proficy Historian HD, which is reportedly the first Hadoop-based historian data management software in existence.
GE said Predictivity will benefit global industries like aviation, healthcare, energy production, transportation and manufacturing.
The company further asserts that this is the first time industrial companies will have a common architecture, which combines intelligent machines, sensors and advanced analytics.
Bill Ruh, vice president of the global software center at GE, said: “GE’s industrial strength platform is the first viable step to not only the next era of industrial productivity, but the next era of computing.
“The ability to bring machines to life with powerful software and sensors is a big advancement – but it is only in the ability to quickly analyse, understand, and put machine-based data to work in real-time that points us to a society that benefits from the promise of big data.”
As well as launching Predictivity, the company has also implemented three partnerships to help support the platform.
The first is a global strategic alliance with consultancy firm Accenture to develop technology and analytics applications for the new offering.
The second is an extension of its technology partnership with Pivotal, which was spun out of VMware and EMC earlier this year, to leverage its Cloud Foundry in-memory and Hadoop-based technology to jointly develop and deploy the service.
The final partnership is with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which will be the first Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) player to host the platform.
Werner Vogels, chief technology officer of Amazon, said: “Decades of GE-led innovation have helped shape history, and we are excited to work with the GE team to help shape the future of industrial Big Data.”
Pivotal’s CEO Paul Maritz added: “Our respective strengths in big and fast data analytics and agile software development will provide our mutual customers with the solutions they need to leverage the industrial internet.”
