The industrial cloud is about to get a lot bigger.

GE and Microsoft Corp. are uniting their cloud computing technologies in a partnership that will bring GE’s Predix platform for the Industrial Internet to businesses running on Microsoft Azure.

The companies say the combination of Predix with Azure will bridge GE’s digital expertise in industry and manufacturing, and Microsoft’s forte in information technology. “Every industry and every company around the world is being transformed by digital technology,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a statement announcing the partnership. “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.”

The partnership is a milestone for GE, traditionally a mainline industrial company which over the last five years has started collecting and analyzing data from jet engines, power plants and hospitals and spent $1 billion to make Predix the operating system for the Industrial Internet. GE believes that by 2020, more than 20 billion devices will be connected to the Industrial Internet, producing an avalanche of data that can be analyzed to make business more efficient. “GE is helping its customers extract value from the vast quantities of data coming out of those machines and is building an ecosystem of partners that will allow the Industrial Internet to thrive on a global scale,” said GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt.

GE has started connecting power plants and railroads to the Industrial Internet. Image credit: GE Digital

Azure will give industrial companies already using Predix additional muscle in areas such as artificial intelligence, advanced data visualization and natural language technology. “Companies don’t want disparate, disjointed systems; they want technology that brings things together,” says Abhi Kunté, global head of technology strategic alliances at GE Digital. “This partnership will provide seamless integration that will drive a lot of efficiencies.”

The partnership will give companies using Microsoft’s Azure a platform to build apps using the data from assets running on Predix. For example, a factory using GE’s Asset Performance Management software will be be able to talk with systems — such as supply chain management and product lifecycle management apps that run on Azure — to unlock greater value from the Industrial Internet.

GE and Microsoft say the combination of Azure and Predix starts pulling together the spider web of platforms competing on the Industrial Internet today. “This is a game changer for this industry that will drive consolidation of platforms on the Internet of Things,” says Kunté.

A developer preview of Predix on Azure will be released by the end of the year, with a commercial release by the second quarter of 2017.

The post GE And Microsoft Join Forces In The Industrial Data Cloud appeared first on GE Reports.

The Industrial Internet is changing the way the world does business — and that includes at 35,000 feet.

 That fact is clearly on display at this year’s Farnborough International Airshow, which started Monday. Airline carriers around the world have started connecting their planes to the Industrial Internet to capture and analyze the data they produce, and use the insights to improve on-time departures and arrivals and the bottom line.

One technology at the core of this transformation is Predix, GE’s operating system for the Industrial Internet. We sat down with Jim Daily, chief digital officer for GE Aviation, at the airshow to talk about the digital revolution and what it means for the airline industry. Here is the edited version of our conversation.

Above: GE Aviation set up a collaboration center inside its pavilion at the Farnborough airshow where customers can explore how software will make planes fly more efficiently. Top: ” You can’t continue to operate aircraft and the airline industry the same way we did 20 or 30 years ago,” says GE Aviation digital chief Jim Daily. Image credit: Adam Senatori for GE Reports

GE Reports: Let’s start with the obvious question. The airline industry is booming, and more people are getting on planes than ever before. Why do we need to connect jets to the internet?

Jim Daily: You can’t continue to operate aircraft and the airline industry the same way we did 20 or 30 years ago. The obvious way to make a leap forward is to use the megabytes of data flying around an airplane at any given time. It’s just a matter of harvesting it and using it in a way that makes the overall industry more efficient. We can use software to gain insights that we couldn’t get before.

GER: How?

JD: By interpreting the data to identify anomalies on the plane before they become issues that cause flights to be delayed or canceled. That’s one element. But we can also use the data to operate the aircraft in the most efficient manner possible and help pilots to select the fastest and most fuel-efficient route to its destination.

GER: Can you give me a concrete example?

JD: Let’s take a look at jet engines. Historically, we optimized jet engines based on assumed distributions, how other engines of the same kind performed over time. But with all the data that we’re now able to collect we can create a digital representation of a single engine that’s not based on historical averages for the entire fleet. We call it the digital twin. The twin tells you the exact state, the exact operational characteristics of that individual engine. That’s revolutionary.

GE placed a GEnx jet engine outside its digital collaboration center. The company is using data and software to make engines work better. Image credit: Adam Senatori for GE Reports

GER: That’s sort of like personalized medicine.

JD: It’s effectively the same thing. If we can know the behavior and the characteristics of a given engine, we can anticipate what’s going to happen with it. Now we can predict problems, be proactive about them and provide the preventive cure before they become delays. This is something we’ve never been able to do before.

GER: Do you find something surprising in the data, answers to questions you didn’t know how to ask?

JD: Yes, absolutely. Some of the signals we picked up were twice or three times removed from the failure mode. Using the digital twin I had mentioned earlier, we’ve been able to find these issues in some cases 10 days prior to the point where they would actually have a physical impact on the aircraft. That’s something, honestly, that exceeded our expectations.

GER: Is this the sort of outcome you are looking for?

JD: Indeed. If we didn’t catch it so early, the repair would have been much more invasive. The software just makes it easier for everyone, the airline as well as GE. It simplifies everything. Once again, the main goal of everything in aviation is keep the planes in the air, keep them flying and get them from Point A to Point B on time. If the planes aren’t flying, they aren’t making money.

GER: Do you need to get the data off the plane to analyze it?

JD: We have a limited capability to get data in flight. It’s fundamentally very expensive. We’re working on compression routines and algorithms that will allow us to get more data in flight during relatively restricted access times. We are also working with our customers to make sure that we get all of the recorded data at the end of a flight. You can do that manually, but we are also working with plane makers on ways that collect and then transmit all of that data wirelessly once the aircraft lands.

GER: Can you run analysis on the data while the plane is in flight, rather than uploading it into the cloud for analysis?

JD: Yes, you can. We call it Predix edge computing. But we’re always working to strike the balance between what can we do locally on the aircraft versus what is more effective and more efficient to do off the aircraft. There’s a tremendous amount of scrutiny by the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] of any software that’s on an airplane. We harden and protect it against cybersecurity threats. We protect it against unintended operation. The bottom line is that Predix edge computing gives us a tool and capability that really does leapfrog what we historically had in terms of onboard maintenance systems.

GER: It takes me back to your personalized medicine example. The FAA is sort of like the Federal Drug Administration for planes.

JD: Absolutely, you’re right. There’s no such thing as resetting your computer in flight. You can’t allow it to happen. The software must have a very high standard, both in terms of operating it on board the aircraft and controlling its critical systems on the aircraft, as well as protecting it from the potential of cyber threats.

GER: What happens to the data after you download it on the ground?

JD: It will all go inside the Predix cloud. We’ve worked closely with GE Digital to make sure that the environment is structured so that one customer’s data is protected from other customers. There’s a tremendous amount of sensitivity, as you can imagine. We run the analytics on the data, but ultimately it’s the airline’s data.

GER: What is the airline industry going to look like in five years?

JD: You are going to see that this digital shift is not a fad. We’ve proven that we can drive significant outcomes. Software is just going to continue to grow exponentially as we move forward. In five years we will get to the point where humans no longer need to walk up to a plane to collect data. Downloads are going to be automatic and they’re going to be wireless. I think we will also continue to get closer and closer to real-time computations through Predix and optimize aircraft as they are performing in flight. Right now there are still too many manual steps. Five years from now, I expect all of that to be effectively autonomous.

GER: How do you tell airlines about everything Predix can do?

JD: We’ve started opening customer collaboration centers around the world where airlines can take the software for a spin. We have one in Dubai and Paris and are opening more in Shanghai, Austin and Southeast Asia. We even brought a scaled-down version with us to Farnborough. Customers can work with data and visualize it in real time. I think having that type of collaboration environment is really going to show them what we can do. This is the first time we brought our digital systems

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Henry Ford’s Model T looks like no car on the road today and the Wright Flyer has been rightfully retired in the Smithsonian. And yet another piece of technology that predates them both—the electric grid—still looks like a network that its designer, Thomas Edison, would recognize.

Edison, who also founded GE, built the first grid in 1882 on Pearl Street in downtown Manhattan. Now GE engineers such as Ganesh Bell, chief digital officer for GE Power, are giving it a major makeover. “Edison’s one-directional electricity value chain, wherein electrons flow from generation through transmission and distribution to consumers, has served our industry well for a century,” Bell says. “But the design of the electricity industry is sure to look very different in the next century, and likely will do so within the next five years.”

Bell says that the key enablers of these changes will be software, data analytics, the Industrial Internet, which will pull data from the grid into the cloud, and even artificial intelligence. They will allow utilities to generate and distribute power more efficiently and also significantly reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

In fact, in June, GE Power rolled out the world’s first Digital Power Plant for Steam, a set of digital technologies that can dramatically reduce heat-trapping emissions by improving the operations and efficiency of coal-fired power plants. GE says it could help eliminate 500 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions if deployed at all existing coal-fired power plants globally. That’s the same as removing 120 million cars from the road—or every tenth car in the world—or covering Earth with a carbon-trapping forest the size of Europe. GE Reports sat down with Bell and asked him about electricity’s digital future.

When not digitizing electrons, Ganesh Bell spends his time at the racetrack. Image credit: Ganesh Bell

GE Reports: Why did you develop the Digital Power Plant for Steam?

Ganesh Bell: When we digitized the wind farm last year, we allowed operators to build the most efficient wind farm and then run it in the most optimal fashion. The DPP for Steam is similar.

Our customers are ultimately in the business of generating and transmitting electrons. They are interested in doing it in the most reliable, effective and productive way from a mix of different fuel sources. But they are also facing a lot of challenges ranging from reducing emissions to plant longevity and fuel price. Our software is helping them to find the best solution and the best mix.

GER: How so?

GB: The average utility can generate power in many different ways, using wind, natural gas, coal or nuclear fuel. But the mix is different in every market, based on demand, regulations, fuel availability and other conditions. Our software will help our customers optimize all of their power generation options, select the best combination and make sure they hit their marks. In Europe, for example, they have to comply with very strict emissions.

GER: Why is coal still so important? Aren’t we trying to get rid of it?

GB: Coal is still a big part of the picture, whether you like it or not. People don’t like to talk about it, but the majority of power generation in many parts of the world is still from coal and it’s not going away. Here’s the challenge: Our customers have sunk a lot of money in coal-fired plants and they expect to run them for decades. But in the post-COP21 world, they may not be able to because they won’t comply. We’re now giving them more options to run their assets by rejuvenating their operations with software.

GE is using virtual reality and video game design to optimize power distribution. Image credit: GE Power

GER: Give me an example.

GB: Take something simple like coal. Its quality varies in different parts of the world but also batch from batch. You have to optimize the power plant for the particular type you have. Today, you set the parameters once and you forget it. But our system is continuously learning and optimizing. This kind of technology is not available today. We figured that just this part of the Digital Power Plant for Steam could reduce fuel consumption by 4,400 tons of coal per year with the same megawatt of output in a single steam power plant.

GER: Does it matter who built the power plant?

GB: No. It doesn’t. It doesn’t matter whether the power plant has machines built by GE, Siemens or Skoda. The software is fully technology-agnostic. In fact, we can extend it beyond coal to plants burning other kinds of fuel like biomass and oil.

GER: What is the big picture here?

GB: Like I said, smart utilities are moving from power generation to optimizing their entire energy mix based on the fuel source. Already the power in your home can include electrons from coal, nuclear power as well as wind, depending on demand, weather, regulations and a number of other factors. We started by optimizing turbines at the asset level, then we moved to power plants across the fleet, and now the next logical step is optimizing all of power generation.

GER: How will you do that?

GB: That’s why GE developed Predix, the cloud-based operating system for the Industrial Internet. The Digital Power Plant for Steam, for gas, the Digital Wind Farm—all of these solutions are built on the same Predix platform. With Predix, you now have an enterprise-wide view of all generation and all data in a single secure cloud. That gives you new, interesting opportunities to solve hard problems.

GER: Like what?

GB: In Europe, for example, Predix allows you to manage how you integrate renewables better into the mix. It gives you new demand flexibility and helps you compensate quickly with traditional fuel sources when the wind stops blowing. We can now make all kinds of power coexist and work together.

The post Software Will Light The Way To Cleaner Electricity: Q&A With GE Power’s Digital Chief Ganesh Bell appeared first on GE Reports.

GE released second quarter results today. Industrial operating plus GE Capital verticals earnings reached $0.51 per share, up 65 percent compared to the second quarter of last year. GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt also reaffirmed the company’s operating framework for the year.

The company also announced that it has returned $18 billion to shareowners for the year to date, including $13.7 billion through a share buyback and $3.7 billion through dividends. In the quarter, GE’s backlog of orders grew to a record $320 billion, up 17 percent since the 2Q’15.

Immelt credited GE’s “strong and balanced” portfolio, saying that its “diversity and scale … enabled the company to perform despite a volatile and slow growth economy.” Strong performance of GE’s Power, Aviation and Healthcare businesses relieved heavy market pressure on GE’s Oil & Gas and Transportation units. Just last week at the Farnborough Air Show in England, GE and its partner companies—primarily its joint venture with Safran Aircraft Engines of France, CFM International—announced orders and commitments valued at $25 billion at list price.

Boeing debuted its next-generation Boeing 737 MAX last week at Farnborough. The planes use two LEAP jet engines with 3D-printed parts and space-age ceramics. The engines were developed by CFM International, a joint venture between GE and Safran Aircraft Engines of France. Below: A close-up of the carbon-fiber composite fan on the LEAP-1B jet engine. Images credit: Adam Senatori for GE Reports

The latest GE and CFM jet engines, such as the GE9X—the world’s largest jet engine— and the LEAP, are benefitting from innovations such as 3D-printed fuel nozzles and parts made from ceramic matrix composites. These technologies help the LEAP, which will power Boeing, Airbus as well as COMAC planes, achieve 15 percent more fuel-efficiency than other similar engines made by CFM. It’s also quieter and emits less pollution. To date, CFM has received orders and commitments for more than 11,300 engines valued at nearly $160 billion. The first delivery of a LEAP-powered Airbus A320neo to a commercial airline took place this week.

In the quarter, GE Power was also awarded the Guinness World Record for power plant efficiency in a power station featuring its latest 9HA gas turbine. The EDF facility in Bouchain, France, hit 62.2 percent efficiency—the power generation equivalent of besting Mike Powell’s “jump for the ages.”

The turbine’s performance is also good business. In just this year, GE signed 11 HA turbine orders. Together, the could power the equivalent of more than 4.5 million homes.

The world record-breaking power plant in Bouchain. Image credit: Tomas Kellner/GE Reports

Other GE Power innovations such as GE’s ultra-supercritical technology, which it acquired with Alstom, and software for coal-fired power plants will allow utilities in Asia and other parts of the world to operate more efficiently and help customers meet climate goals. A deal to provide technology for a 2,400MW ultra-supercritical coal plant in Dubai, for example, will efficiently increase the city’s total power supply by a 25 percent.

Power plants are also a good example of GE’s transformation into the world’s top digital-industrial company. Its “digital twins” of wind farms and power stations, neural nets for coal-fired boilers and other software are the result of GE Digital’s $1 billion investment to develop Predix. The cloud-based software platform allows GE businesses and their customers to connect locomotives, medical scanners and entire “brilliant factories” to the Industrial Internet, collect and analyze data and make them run more efficiently.

An ultra-supercritical steam turbine at the RDK8 power plant in Germany. RDK8 is the world’s most efficient coal-fired power plant. Image credit: GE Power

Earlier this year, GE Digital opened Predix to outside developers in the first quarter and currently has close to 12,000 developers registered to use the platform, on track to reach the 20,000 developers target at the end of the year. GE has also partnered with companies like Microsoft and Intel.

GE’s digital transformation is happening at the same time as the company is leaving the lending business. Through the second quarter, GE Capital has signed deals to sell assets valued at $181 billion, ahead of its original plan. The company expects the deal total to reach $200 billion by the end of the year.

Since 2012, GE Capital has reduced its assets from $549 billion to less than half of this size. On June 28, the Financial Stability Oversight Council “de-designated” the financial unit as a Systematically Important Financial Institution (SIFI). “Our de-designation gives us more balance sheet flexibility,” Immelt said. “We will continue to invest in key growth initiatives such as GE Digital, while returning about $26 billion in cash to investors through buybacks and dividends.”

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There is plenty of uncertainty in Brussels this summer, the home to a number of European Union institutions. But one safe bet in the Belgian metropolis is that the lights will stay on.

That’s because the city’s electrical grid is using the Industrial Internet to get smarter. Sibelga, the company that operates the only distribution network in Brussels, will soon adopt GE’s PowerOn Advantage, a sophisticated software solution that controls electricity flows between the traditional grid and the consumer. The software runs on Predix, GE’s data and analytics platform.

By collecting and analyzing data about the gigantic mesh of wires and cables that keep Brussels humming, it will allow Sibelga to optimize power flows around the city, avoid outages and minimize waste.

This advanced distribution management system (ADMS) will be invaluable to Belgium as it braces for a boom in renewable energy generation. The country is aiming for renewables to account for 13 percent of energy consumption by 2020. “Renewables have helped to break the traditional top-down electricity model,” says Karim El Naggar, chief digital officer at GE Energy Connections. “The growing percentage of solar and wind in the mix means that more energy is flowing from the bottom up.”

Brussels is home to a number of EU institutions, including its executive body, the European Commission (above). Images credit: Shutterstock

This inversion helps cut carbon emissions, but it also strains the power grid. Our electricity superhighways now need to handle smaller-scale plants that are feeding in power at various voltages, as well as manage power flows that are constantly changing direction.

The intermittence of renewables requires the grid to be a smart courier rather than purely a carrier. Sibelga, which is already one of Europe’s most reliable networks, is constantly fine-tuning power demand as more sources of renewable power are connected to the grid.

El Naggar says that PowerOn Advantage technology will bring a 30 percent reduction in customer minutes lost to outages compared with traditional distribution management systems. Large grid disruptions, when network constraints are close to breaching, generally result in the network dropping solar or wind farms. However, this software allows 20 percent more connections to remain online.

The technology also promises long-term financial benefits. A smarter grid doesn’t just improve the overall quality of power. It increases the lifetime of the cables and transformers that make up the grid, allowing operators to save millions on maintenance and repairs. Those millions can be reinvested to further shore up the grid or expand the network.  “We have taken a long-term view on the technology,” says François Chevalier, a manager of Network Control at Sibelga.

The ADMS is used across the grid, from the utility control room boss tracking the load curve to the engineer switching wires in the field. They’re not wasting time sifting through reams of data, either. “We’ve built the software in a way that allows the data to come to those who need it rather than them having to search for it,” El Naggar says.

Northern European weather is eternally unpredictable. The control room boss might receive a forecast for variable solar and wind generation over the next 24 hours. This would traditionally require constant reconfiguring of the grid to absorb the clean power safely and efficiently. The new software, however, optimizes this process by using historical information about similar days to ensure smooth operation.

The engineer working on the final mile of cable to the customer could also input data into a mobile device. The whole process is decentralized and requires collaborative control, El Naggar says.

Chevalier says that the software will seamlessly integrate with the company’s network. “We wanted to minimize the change to our business processes for the people using the new platform. We were confident that GE’s software allowed us to do this.”

The post Brussels Is Sprouting A Digital Grid For A Green Boom appeared first on GE Reports.

Sam Cossman is the human version of a heat-seeking missile. In fact, he craves heat to the extreme. Cossman, perhaps the world’s most prominent volcano explorer of the moment, spent the early part of August lowering himself into Nicaragua’s active Masaya Volcano, which is threatening people living in the area.

Clad in a silver suit that can withstand 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, Cossman repeatedly descended 1,200 feet into the maw of a crater terminating in a bright orange lava lake and falls.

As breathtaking as it was, the feat was no stunt. He’s on a mission from the Nicaraguan government to install more than 80 sensors inside the crater. The sensors will feed data into Predix, a cloud-based software platform GE developed for the Industrial Internet. “We are basically bringing the first volcano online,” Cossman says. His digital media company, Qwake, is documenting the project.

The goal of the project is to build a digital early warning system for eruptions. Data scientists will use the information to build a family of “digital twins” that can simulate the conditions inside the crater. But the team will also make the data available to anyone in the world who wants to build their own volcano applications and help keep Masaya in check.

We caught up with Cossman in Nicaragua, just as he was getting ready for another descent. Here’s an edited version of our conversation. You can also follow the expedition live on GE’s Snapchat and Instagram channels (username: GeneralElectric).

The inscription on Dante’s gates of Hell declared: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” Sam Cossman would disagree. He is installing a digital warning system inside the inferno of the Masaya Volcano. Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, just 12 miles (20 kilometers) to the north, is visible from the slumbering volcano rising 2,083 feet (635 meters) above the sea level. Top and above images credit: @tmophotos, Qwake

GE Reports: Why did you choose the Masaya Volcano?

Sam Cossman: This project came about because of a random email from an owner of a bed-and-breakfast below the mountain. He sent me a link to a video, and I was blown away by what I saw. It’s one thing to see a lava lake—there are maybe 10 permanent ones in the world—but this one was very unique.

GER: What caught your eye?

SC: The lake was not just a bubbling, churning pit of magma. This one looked like a waterfall more than a lake. It was a one-directional flow of lava going over a cliff. It hinted on the size of the magma chamber below. It could potentially endanger the lives of the people who were living next to the rupture. The government had already shut access to the volcano.

GER: How did you get to it?

SC: I got in contact with the government, and they agreed to an expedition. They wanted to know more about the mountain, a sleeping giant that had lain dormant for many years but suddenly was awoken and was causing a lot of concern and consternation.

GER: Tell me about your team.

SC: Since we knew so little about the volcano, I assembled a team of people with a variety of skill sets. We have physicists, volcanologists, back-end software developers, data scientists, and of course a drone expert and production crew. We started to put the pieces in place to build out a system that would allow us to have a much better, more holistic sense of what was happening beneath the surface of this volcano.

GER: How did GE get involved?

SC: I knew Sam Olstein, director of innovation at GE, and we started talking about leveraging Predix. It just snowballed from there.

GER: Explain it to me.

SC: We essentially decided to create a digital plan of the volcano. Very rarely, if ever, has someone instrumented a volcano with this many sensors. I think it would be somewhat analogous to not feeling well and going to the doctor and having them look at one aspect of your body. It doesn’t really give you the full picture of what’s going on. To be able to look at this many parameters and then relate all those parameters to one another is really where the magic lies.

GER: What types of sensors did you use?

SC: We created a mesh network from more than 80 sensors. We’ll be measuring things like atmospheric pressure, temperature, various types of gasses—sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide—as well as seismic data, gravity data with gravimeters and a number of other parameters in different places around and inside the volcano.

Cossman and his team are installing more than 80 sensors inside the crater. Image credit: Qwake

GER: What do the sensors look like?

SC: They are about 3 inches by 4 inches. You can fit them in your hand. That said, they are pretty extreme. You’ve got a number of different things working against you, including noxious superheated gases that are extremely corrosive. Just to give you an idea, we left a brand-new stainless steel winch up there one night, and the next day we came back to it and it looked like it had been there for 200 years.

The heat itself can melt batteries inside the sensors, and then you have the plume. It’s is obviously also toxic but limits the solar radiation we use to charge the batteries, as well.

Essentially, most of the gear that we will be taking with us, including cameras, will be throwaways—thousands and thousands of dollars of stuff because of the corrosive nature of the sulfur dioxide and the various gases. That’s one element that we’ve got that we’re up against.

Some of the sensors will be close to the lava lake. Image credit: Qwake

GER: Right, but the sensors will have to stay there and keep working after you leave. How do you protect them?

SC: We are working with Libelium, a company in Spain that builds the sensor nodes, which include an airtight enclosure the size of lunchbox. We will fill it with silicone and then pump out the air so there is vacuum inside.

GER: How do you get the sensors down there?

SC: We install them. We will be going down as deep as 1,200 feet (The Eiffel Tower is almost 1,000 feet tall.) The temperature is fairly linear, and it has to do with the proximity to the lava itself, as well as the line of sight. Where we intend to install the sensors, it probably won’t be more than 150 degrees Fahrenheit. We’ll be conducting other experiments and navigating and traversing around the bottom to look for our sensor installation locations. Some of those regions are as hot as 800 to 1000 degrees.

Dr. Guillermo Caravantes (right), the expedition’s chief volcanologist, is inspecting sensors. They will rely on solar power to keep working. Image credit: @tmophotos, Qwake

GER: How do you transmit the data?

SC: We will be installing sensor nodes both around and inside the volcano, and then we’ll be building two repeaters that will communicate with an internet portal about 2 kilometers away, at a visitor center at the entrance to the park. The data will travel over a 3G cellular network.

GER: What do you do with the data?

SC: We take all of the data in near real time and stream it to a database. We then use deep learning algorithms and AI to look for patterns in the data. We can learn from the patterns that begin to surface and associate them with specific volcanic processes that could be dangerous. For instance, if a certain gas starts becoming more prevalent in conjunction with elevated seismic data, it may mean that a body of magma is rising.

Hugo Nordell, the team’s lead engineer, is testing a solar panel for one of the sensors at the lip of the crater. Image credit: @tmophotos, Qwake

GER: What is the ultimate goal?

SC: We are building a digital early warning system. Basically, there are four or five very specific volcanic processes that affect the human population. They include a rising body of magma, an impending explosion, degassing events that can lead to gases and acid rain damaging neighboring towns, and potentially explosive eruptions producing enormous amounts of ash as well, which can settle on roofs and make homes to collapse and kill people that way. The goal of this project is to mitigate their potential risk and provide people with a better sense of what’s happening.

We also want to use it as a proof of concept that we can implement around the world. It could benefit the millions of people who are living near active volcanoes.

GER: Who has access to the data?

SC: This is an open-source project. We will give access to the greater community of developers, technologists and scientists around the world so that they too can begin to answer some of their own questions. This way it becomes a much wider initiative that could spawn many more innovations, well beyond what we’re doing.

GER: Where will the data live?

SC: We’ll creating an open application program interface (API) built on Predix that any one in the world with a computer can access.

The post Sam Likes It Hot: This Intrepid Explorer Just Connected Nicaragua’s Most Active Volcano To The Internet appeared first on GE Reports.

Since GE started building its digital business five years ago, it has pursued organic growth, combining a century of domain expertise in building big machines with asset management software and advanced industrial analytics. But the company also has been willing to buy growth when the right opportunity comes along.

Today, GE Digital, the company’s software arm, said it acquired Meridium, Inc., a leading developer of asset performance management (APM) software for machine-heavy industries such as oil, gas, electricity and chemicals. The deal values Meridium, based in Roanoke, Virginia, at $495 million.

GE first invested in Meridium in 2014, buying a quarter of the company. Today it purchased the remaining stake. “As we forge ahead in the Industrial Internet journey, APM is clearly the first application that can leverage the Predix platform to help industrial customers benefit from increased productivity,” said Bill Ruh, CEO of GE Digital.

Top and above: GE acquired Meridium, Inc., a leading developer of asset performance management (APM) software for machine-heavy industries like oil, gas, electricity and chemicals. Images credit: Getty Images

Predix is GE’s cloud-based operating system for the Industrial Internet. It is similar to iOS or Android but built specifically for the unique velocity, variety and volume of industrial-strength data coming off machines. The platform allows developers to mine industrial data and write APM apps for everything from MRI scanners and jet engines to entire production facilities such as offshore platforms and factories. The software supplies insights to operators who use them to make the machines run more efficiently.

The deal will allow GE to combine Meridium’s APM software with Predix and help customers maximize the reliability and availability of their assets and reduced operating and maintenance costs. “We can immediately complement our existing portfolio with the Meridium expertise in cognitive analytics, reliability centered maintenance, operational risk management and asset health, as well as intelligent asset strategies,” Ruh said. “Meridium also has a mature software development culture, which will help us enhance our bench of deep technology talent.”

Both GE and Meridium already have global reach. The Roanoke business has customers in more than 80 countries, and its software is working at more than 1,200 locations. GE plans to become “a top 10 software company” by 2020 with $15 billion in digital revenues.

Meridium is GE’s second prominent software acquisition this year. In April, the company acquired Boston’s NeuCo Inc., which uses software and artificial intelligence to improve the efficiency of coal-fired power plants.

GE also opened Predix to outside developers in 2016. Now GE software engineers, partners such as Intel, customers and independent coders can start building their applications in the platform and offering them through the Predix marketplace. Ruh says 20,000 developers will be working on Predix by the end of 2016.

The post GE Buys $500 Million Machine Analytics Firm appeared first on GE Reports.

We fly connected planes and design self-driving cars, but what about smart trains? If you pay close attention, there is the faint sound of the whistle coming from around the digital bend.

At this week’s InnoTrans 2016 transportation trade show in Berlin, for example, GE is unveiling a “superbrain” platform for locomotives that transforms them into mobile data headquarters—helping make trains smarter and faster. “A decade from now, digital tools will take railroad productivity and efficiency to unprecedented levels,” says Seth Bodnar, chief digital officer at GE Transportation. “The whole network will light up like a brain.”

It’s about time. Bodnar’s train brain will help railways boost locomotive horsepower, improve operations and burn less fuel. “It’s really about enabling self-aware trains in a smart ecosystem,” he says.

GE’s Tier 4 Evolution Series locomotive at a test track in Pueblo, Colorado. Image credit: GE Transportation

In the age of consumption and climate change, this is important stuff. For starters, freight has big environmental benefits. On average, railroads are four times more fuel-efficient than trucks, according to the Association of American Railroads, and moving more freight to rails would cut down on traffic and pollution on highways. Consider that a single 12-cylinder GE Evolution Series locomotive can pull the equivalent of 170 Boeing 747 jetliners.

The brain connects to GoLINC—an onboard software and computing platform that turns a locomotive into what is essentially a mobile data center. The system is already in more than 6,000 trains.

GoLINC allows train operators to gather information from track sensors and cameras to better understand the flow of rail traffic and road conditions. It uses the data to make intelligent decisions, even while traveling through the Rockies or the Mojave Desert.

But the system is just part of GE’s vision for the industry’s digital future. The company wants to connect all of its 21,000 locomotives, pulling freight and passengers in 50 countries, to Predix, its cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet.

Right now the U.S. rail industry deals with 500,000 delays a year, and one in every four trains experiences some kind of unplanned downtime. By making trains smarter and connecting them to the Industrial Internet, freight companies can reduce this downtime. GoLINC, working with other Predix train apps such as Trip Optimizer and Yard Planner, can anticipate maintenance problems so operators can resolve them before they become a problem. They can see where lines are running efficiently and where routes need to be reworked.

Even a small improvement in efficiency can make a big difference. A 1 percent reduction in wait times at stops can save $2.2 billion, GE says. A 1 mph rise in speed can save $2.5 billion.

And while new locomotives, such as GE’s T4, are coming off the production lines complete with sensors and the latest data analytics technology, GE is also upgrading older engines at half the cost of buying a new train. “We start targeting locomotives for an upgrade when they’re about 15 or 20 years old,” says John Manison, a senior business operations executive for GE’s locomotive modernization program. “But we do modernizations in locomotives up to 40 years old—giving them 20 more years of life is a lot.”

The post Brains For Trains: How Software Is Making Trains Smarter appeared first on GE Reports.

When the machines of tomorrow talk to each other, what language will they speak? Will a German car be able to communicate with traffic in America, and a jet engine from Cincinnati with a maintenance shop in China?

GE Digital and Bosch Software Innovations, the Bosch Group’s software and systems house, are working together to make machines and devices understand each other through a common language.

Those standards are needed. There will be more than 50 billion devices connected to the Industrial Internet by 2020, generating many petabytes of data. Bosch Software Innovations Chief Executive Rainer Kallenbach says there are already too many competing technologies. “This partnership between Bosch and GE is very promising because the Internet of Things will not deliver value for connected businesses and users if we have more than 120 different, isolated platforms,” he says. “We must interconnect them, otherwise we will end up with a series of isolated islands operating just for themselves.”

There will be more than 50 billion devices connected to the Industrial Internet by 2020, generating many petabytes of data. Image credit: Shutterstock. Top illustration: Getty Images

Harel Kodesh, chief technology officer of GE Digital, says that the collaboration with Bosch will connect the industrial world and the consumer, allowing machines that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, such as wind turbines, and consumer machines such as household appliances, to speak a common language. The Harvard Business Review recently published a graphic showing the many different players and platforms competing on the Industrial Internet. The picture looks more like a spider web than an engineering schematic. GE’s Kodesh likens the situation to the automobile business in the 1920s. “At the start of any new market there is over-segmentation. The number of carmakers dropped from 253 in 1908 to only 44 in 1929 as more and more capital was needed to produce great cars,” he says, noting that now there are only a few American carmakers, supported by many suppliers of specialist parts. He predicts the development of the Industrial Internet will follow a similar path.

The GE-Bosch alliance could make an impact especially in Europe, a growth market for connected industrial applications. Bosch is a member of a German public-private initiative called “Plattform Industrie 4.0,” one of several European groups working on standards for the Internet of Things. In the United States, GE is a founding member of the Industrial Internet Consortium, which Bosch also joined last year as a steering committee member in an effort to connect the U.S. and German initiatives.

The memorandum of understanding between GE Digital and Bosch Software Innovations will allow the firms to explore new Industrial Internet solutions that will combine GE’s cloud-based Predix platform with the cloud-based Bosch IoT Suite to establish an interoperable ecosystem. It’s the computer equivalent of building bridges and tunnels to connect two islands, effectively making them one territory.

Systems like GE’s Predix and Bosch’s IoT Suite allow sensors on machines to gather a huge amount of data that can be crunched. For example, sensors on jet engines create gigabytes of data per flight. Analysis of that data can alert engineers that a part needs to be replaced and can also make engines more fuel efficient, saving airlines money. It’s an approach that makes machines more productive and allows them to learn from their experiences in order to improve performance. Software companies are also developing apps that leverage Predix. The Bosch IoT Suite today connects more than 5 million devices and machines in industrial, mobility, smart grid, city and building applications.

GE hopes that Predix and related software will help the company generate $15 billion in revenues by 2020.

GE also joined the Eclipse Foundation—and open source community of developers—where Bosch is the strategic member. Together they will bring open-source Eclipse IoT components to GE’s Cloud Foundry, a collaborative space where coders, data scientists and app developers can incubate new startups and work with customers on new software applications.

The post Esperanto For Machines: GE And Bosch Partner To Help Machines Talk To Each Other appeared first on GE Reports.

The 1953 movie “Niagara” starred Marilyn Monroe as a honeymooner with a wandering eye taking a trip to Niagara Falls. But she was hardly the only one seduced by the power of the water flowing through the Niagara River, which straddles the border between the U.S. and Canada in northwestern New York. Just a few years later, engineers built one of America’s largest hydropower plants a short drive below the falls.

That power station is about to make history again — bringing the state’s electricity generation into the digital age. The plant’s operator, New York Power Authority (NYPA), signed a deal with GE today to connect the plant’s 16 turbines — as well as other power assets throughout the state — to the cloud via the Industrial Internet.

The deal is part of NYPA’s $1.1 billion drive to modernize its infrastructure over a decade. Using software and data analysis to improve reliability and efficiency and reduce downtime will allow the authority — which produces as much as one-fifth of New York’s electricity and owns one-third of the state’s transmission lines — to capture an estimated $2.25 billion of savings.

Above: GE has already connected a hydro turbine in the French city of Briançon to the cloud. Image credit: GE Renewable Energy. Top: The Niagara Falls are powerful on many levels. Image credit: Getty Images

The agreement is one of the largest to date for GE Digital. It will use thousands of sensors to gather data from hundreds of NYPA’s gas and hydro turbines, generators and other machines and feed it to its asset performance management (APM) system powered by Predix, GE’s cloud-based operating system for the Industrial Internet.

The system will use the real-time data — such as acceleration on bearings, vibrations, wear, heat and moisture — to optimize the equipment. It will also build a “digital twin” — a virtual doppelganger of the NYPA network that will allow engineers to simulate multiple scenarios and predict possible outcomes.

The systems can monitor equipment made by GE and also by other manufacturers.

The data analysis results will flow to NYPA’s new Smart Operations Center in White Plains, New York, which is set to open in December. They will alert operators to possible failures weeks before they might occur, among other issues. Better operations will also allow the authority to cut its carbon emissions.

NYPA Chief Executive Gil Quiniones says the deal is “a transformative moment in the 85-year history for NYPA and its customers as we reach the next milestone in our digital journey.”

NYPA’s hydropower plant at Niagara Falls. Image credit: Shutterstock

NYPA generates power for government customers in New York City and Westchester County and sells power through utilities. It is the first U.S. power provider to sign such an enterprise-wide digital deal with GE.

GE already has tested its approach of blending physical and digital elements to generate hydropower at a dam above the city of Briançon, in a mountainous corner of France best known for punishing Tour de France stages. From last December to July, they collected and analyzed more than 7 terabytes of data and also digested three years’ worth of temperature, maintenance and downtime data collected by the utility.

Bringing digital capabilities to electricity generation networks that got their start more than 100 years ago has the potential to generate huge savings, says Ganesh Bell, chief digital officer at GE Power. “The digital transformation of electric power has the potential to create more than a trillion dollars of economic and societal value in the next decade,” Bell says. “NYPA is truly a pioneer, moving first to unleash the value that comes from connecting, monitoring, analyzing and ultimately optimizing the performance of its entire electricity value network.”

GE beat five other competitors to win the NYPA contract. In the coming years, NYPA says it will also use the center to improve such functions as cybersecurity and physical security across its generation fleet and transmission system.

The post Here’s Why Connecting Niagara To The Internet Is A Really Good Idea appeared first on GE Reports.

Ping-Pong tables and foosball aren’t the sorts of things people typically associate with a 124-year-old company that builds turbines for power plants and engines for planes. But they are part of the package at GE’s new “Digital foundry” that opened a short walk from beaux-arts halls of the Paris Opera this summer. “You are surrounded by these contrasts of old and new; years of deep expertise and the desire to chart the future,” said Adrien Rivierre, a media manager at the place who recently showed GE Reports around. “This is the most interesting place to work in the city.”

GE has been connecting machines to the Industrial Internet of Things and transforming itself into a “digital-industrial company” for several years.  The way the company sees it, the digital foundry is a place where engineers can write software that makes sense of all the data the machines produce and also incubate new ideas that could seed startups. One data scientist at the foundry, for instance, is currently building an algorithm that can sort and categorize thousands of images from MRIs made by GE Healthcare, cutting down on time technicians would have to spend doing the same work.

Most of the apps will work on Predix, GE’s cloud-based platform for the Industrial Internet. The Internet of Things already connects 13.4 billion devices, and that number is expected to jump to 38.5 billion by 2020.

Software engineers at GE’s new digital foundry in Paris are connecting wind turbines, jet engines and other machines to the Industrial Internet of Things. Image credit:  GE Digital. Top Image: Overlooking Parisian rooftops, workers have a direct view of the Paris Opera. Image credit: Getty Images

But not everyone here is a GE employee. “The idea is to bring together customers, students and GE engineers and allow them to collaborate and find new solutions,” Rivierre says. “Increasingly, the best ideas in technology and industry are being sparked by chance conversations. This is the power of serendipity. Sometimes to innovate, you need a game of foosball!”

The creative stimulation is indeed everywhere. The foundry occupies two floors in the 140-year-old Le Centorial building on the Rue du Quatre Septembre, which still features towering glass and steel domes designed by Gustave Eiffel. But inside the foundry is a matrix of cleverly designed pods where engineers and data scientists collaborate on clever algorithms designed to find meaning in terabytes of data.

There are now 70 staff members specializing in data science, design and software development working for industries including oil and gas, power, and healthcare. Image credit: GE Digital

In fact, the sole focus of the foundry’s interior structure is to foster teamwork. Japanese architect Hidekazu Moritani, who designed the place, based his vision on the honeycomb structures of beehives. Walk into a rectangular room and you have a sense of closure. Moritani’s big idea was that hexagonal-shaped rooms feel more dynamic because you are more likely to be able to touch a wall, which was exactly what he wanted.

All of the walls are actually whiteboards so that people can write down ideas the second they pop into their minds. That way, the possibility of recalling an insight is never more than a few steps away.

During a recent visit, many walls were already filled from top to bottom with algorithms. Below them on a table, an engineer was using software code to control a model of a wind turbine. Another one was programming a drone. (GE is already building 3D virtual versions, or digital twins, of entire wind farms to optimize their design and production. The company also looking for way to use drones for remote field inspections.) “The opportunity to start something from scratch, and particularly at GE, is thrilling,” says Benoit Laurent, a software architect working at the foundry. “Here you can literally feel the motivation.” Or duck to avoid it. “We do have some flying drone competitions sometimes,” he added.

Moritani’s design also takes GE’s industrial heritage into account. He pulled down the false ceilings in each room and exposed the guts of the building — metallic beams, lighting supports and pipes. He used materials you’d typically find in a factory or power plant — reflective metal resins, wooden floor and woven, rough-textured fabric — and combined them with softer materials and furnishings.

He also wanted to avoid any “dead-end spaces,” so he designed walkways that allow people to meander around the design pods, with few straight corridors. “We want people to feel at ease,” said Moritani, who moved to Paris from Japan 11 years ago and stayed. “People come inside and when they have ideas, they don’t have to go into a meeting room and open a computer. They can start writing on the walls right away.”

The foundry occupies two floors in the 140-year-old Le Centorial building, which still features towering glass and steel domes designed by Gustave Eiffel. Image credit: GE Digital

The European digital foundry in Paris is the first in a series of similar spaces GE is building around the world. Another has already opened in Shanghai. In Paris, there are now 70 staff members specializing in data science, design and software development working for industries including oil and gas, power, and healthcare. GE plans to grow the number of people working in the Europe foundry to 250 by 2018.

The writing on these walls portends the industrial world’s next great developments.

All of the walls are actually whiteboards so that people can jot down ideas the second they pop into their minds. Image credit: GE Digital

The post An Office With A View: New “Digital Foundry” In Paris Is Forging GE’s Software Future appeared first on GE Reports.

Grease monkeys have been tinkering with Ford Mustangs — the most iconic of the classic American muscle cars — ever since the first one rolled out in 1964. But a car enthusiast in Germany has taken tinkering to the next level. Hanns Proenen, the chief information security officer for GE in Europe, has hacked his Mustang using Predix, GE’s cloud-based platform for the Industrial Internet. He says his classic car is now a data-gathering machine that could rival an electric car.

Proenen is 61 years old, and his story started three years ago when he and his wife decided to spend on a classic car. “Something from our youth,” he remembers. A second-hand Mustang on the market in Los Angeles caught his eye, and the couple hopped on a flight to meet a Disneyland elevator engineer who had been its sole owner since 1966. Proenen and his wife fell in love with the simplicity of the car and brought it back to Germany.

“These old cars don’t have elaborate electronics,” says the veteran engineer. “They’re transparent. You see exactly how things work.” Open the hood of a modern car and you’ll find a large plastic cover and a complex warren of hoses and wires. “If you open the hood of an old car, you know exactly why every wire and hose is there,” Proenen says.

Above: The new brain of Proenen’s red Mustang. “It doesn’t matter if you take data from a windmill, or power generator, or a Ford Mustang,” he says. Image credit: Hanns Proenen. Top image: The Predix-Mustang in Kitzbuehel, Austria, during the Alpen-Rallye car race. Image credit: Flash Fotoservice.

But this story is about more than just love at first sight. In April, when GE asked a team of managers to demonstrate the security of transferring data to Predix, Proenen saw an opportunity to marry his affection for cars with his love of coding. “It doesn’t matter if you take data from a windmill, or power generator, or a Ford Mustang,” he says of the Predix platform, which runs on Linux, an open-source operating system. “It’s a machine that produces data.”

Getting data such as oil temperature, oil pressure, engine RPMs and GPS was easy enough using simple sensors he bought online for as little as $50. The hard part was figuring out how to transfer all that data onto a sophisticated platform like Predix.

Predix allows machine and plant operators not only to monitor machines but also to run analytics on them. When you mix in data from outside sources about weather, maps and traffic, you can start building a bigger picture about how something like a car is running. But Proenen also wanted to keep the program as simple as possible.

He did that by writing a program in the C programming language with just 30 lines of code to collect data from the Mustang, and another 40 lines to process and analyze the data on the Predix platform. By modern standards, that’s a very small stack of code. Many modern-day web programs and mobile apps can run hundreds or even thousands of lines of code in more complicated modern languages such as Python and Java.

As a result, Proenen can now analyze data being collected from the car over the course of several months to track, for instance, how and when the car overheats. Proenen had suspected for a while that his classic car was overheating whenever it came to a standstill during long drives through the German and Austrian mountains. His program confirmed it. “It was interesting to see,” he says. “We never had overheating in motion. Now I had the data prove it.”

Proenen’s Mustang experiment proves two key points: He can transfer data securely from a machine to the Predix platform, and a simple, lightweight program is sufficient for doing so.

“Simplicity is the key to security,” he says. “If you make things overly complex, and you can’t understand the moving parts anymore, you have a lot more opportunities for vulnerabilities.”

Proenen and his 1966 Ford Mustang outside GE Global Research in Munich. Image credit: Hanns Proenen

The post Back To The Future: This GE Software Engineer Used Code To Bring New Muscle To His Ford Mustang appeared first on GE Reports.

GE Digital’s latest acquisition is going to make life easier for the people who fix the jet engines, power plants, medical scanners and other technology that we rely on every day. Pleasanton, California-based ServiceMax makes cloud-based applications for field service management to help customers better optimize their assets. Essentially, this means giving technicians in the field the digital tools they need to service and maintain equipment at the right time.

The combination of this technology and the Predix platform will speed up development of “killer apps” for service operations and will help customers increase productivity by harnessing the full potential of the Industrial Internet through the Predix platform.

In recent years, GE has expanded beyond its industrial heritage to become more digital. It has established GE Digital and built Predix, its operating system that connects millions of machines across the Industrial Internet. More than 19,000 developers globally are now building apps on Predix to make machines smarter. Thanks to those efforts, a jet engine can send a message that it will need a new part when it lands and a power plant can send an alert that a vital piece of machinery could benefit from a service visit.

However, in many businesses, technicians still operate with paper manuals, clipboards and pencils, unaware of what part is needed until they open up a broken machine and look inside. ServiceMax is changing that, creating innovative digital tools that can help more than 20 million field service technicians globally, so they will arrive on-site knowing what parts are needed and what attention the machine needs. They can even invoice customers on the spot as well.

GE Digital’s latest acquisition is going to make life easier for the people who fix the jet engines, power plants, medical scanners.” Images credit: GE Reports

ServiceMax’s field service management software gives technicians in the field real-time information about physical assets, gathered from sensors on machines and sent to their mobile devices via the cloud. Now, a technician has the entire service history of a machine and insight into any problems. At its best, a technician is alerted when a machine is about to break, facilitating proactive maintenance before costly unscheduled downtime occurs.

GE Ventures had already made an investment in ServiceMax in 2015, joining an $82 million round of funding for the private company, popular among firms that manage large fleets of service trucks and large numbers of technicians. The new deal values the company at $945 million.

ServiceMax’s applications manage inventory and parts logistics, technician scheduling and service jobs as well as work order management. All of that now becomes part of GE’s Predix platform. The two companies already had a strong working relationship, having worked together on projects that yielded productivity improvements worth nearly $50 million dollars across GE’s businesses over the past two years.

“This acquisition builds upon our ongoing efforts to enhance our overall technology stack around the Predix platform and advance our Industrial Internet vision,” says Bill Ruh, chief executive of GE Digital.

ServiceMax Chief Executive David Yarnold says his firm can now, “expand into new markets while continuing to deliver the best tools to help customers maximize productivity and efficiency.”

The deal, set to close in January, is the latest acquisition as GE Digital builds its Industrial Internet of Things offering, connecting millions of machines globally and creating an ecosystem of industrial apps to optimize their efficiency. All GE businesses are linking machines to the cloud. GE Transportation is optimizing rail networks, GE Aviation is focusing on fleets of passenger jets and GE Healthcare uses software and analytics to improve treatment and reduce costs.

The post Service Economy 2.0: Big GE Digital Acquisition Uses Cloud Analytics To Keep Machines In Shape appeared first on GE Reports.

Thomas Edison famously said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Kevin Collins can relate. By fanning the embers of a promising idea for years, he built his powerful machine learning company called Bit Stew. Now GE, the company Edison founded, just acquired it for an undisclosed sum.

GE made the announcement at its Minds+Machines conference, which is taking place this week in San Francisco.

Collins says Bit Stew will help make Predix, GE Digital’s cloud-based platform connecting devices on the Industrial Internet, faster and more effective. Bit Stew collects data coming from hundreds of sensors and quickly funnels it into software that analyzes the data.

“Data integration is the Achilles’ heel of dealing with data coming from diverse sources and systems,” says Collins. “With our technology, we can intelligently ingest data, model it, make sense of it, establish relationships and cleanse the data through our artificial intelligence engine, which does in minutes what can take months, if not years, for a human to do.”

Collins says he hopes the acquisition will lead to Bit Stew’s platform, called MIx Core, being incorporated into GE’s Predix offering.

Bit Stew emerged as a leader in data intelligence for the Industrial Internet. Image credit: Getty Images

Getting here was a tough journey for Collins. In 2001, he started NetReliance, a business-to-business transaction firm with customers including Agilent Technologies and Amazon. But the startup went bust after tech stocks collapsed soon after the company was founded. “We lost our house and our entire life savings, and we had two small kids at the time,” says Collins.

Despite the setback, Collins and his wife found they enjoyed being entrepreneurs and decided to start again — this time more cautiously. Collins and partner Alex Clark, Bit Stew’s chief software architect and co-founder, came up with the idea for Bit Stew after learning about the data integration problems the industry was facing when the pair was working at another startup.

In 2009, they started Bit Stew in Collins’ native Vancouver after landing a large Canadian electricity utility, BC Hydro, as their first customer. The utility trusted the then unknown startup to integrate and analyze data from 2 million smart meters, 2,000 network devices and 30 operational, enterprise and legacy systems. (Today, BC Hydro’s smart grid deployment is recognized by the global energy industry for its digital transformation.)

Bit Stew emerged as a leader in data intelligence for the Industrial Internet, and five years later, when GE was working on Predix, Bit Stew grabbed the attention of GE Ventures executives. As the relationship grew, GE Ventures led a $17 million Series-B funding round for Bit Stew. GE Digital’s acquisition of Bit Stew marks the first time that the company has acquired a firm that GE Ventures invested in. Since the GE Venture’s investment, GE Digital and Bit Stew have worked together with several large customers to integrate data from different complex sources.

Collins said he sold to GE because of how well Bit Stew’s product fits with Predix. “GE has the most well thought-out strategy when it comes to the Industrial Internet while everyone else is struggling.”

Collins believes that adding MIx Core to Predix will make it easier for asset performance management software to improve the efficiency of everything from power plants to factories. At a power plant, for example, the platform can learn how machines and assets are connected, gather data from alarms and from sensors on turbines and show how well machines are operating.

“The machine does the job of the human. It detects patterns in the data and automatically finds synergies and connections. A human doesn’t have to get involved,” says Collins. That data is then fed into APM software, which can suggest things such as how to optimize fuel flow to a turbine or when to schedule maintenance to avoid costly downtime.

“We have more than 35 million connected devices on our software already, and we process more than 10 terabytes of data every day,” says Collins. “We manage as much data as the content of the printed collection of the U.S. Library of Congress every day.”

Bit Stew’s Collins says the deal adds a strong set of technology talent and expertise to his company’s fast-growing team. “Everyone is really excited to join the GE family,” he says

Collins says he and his wife Brenda will move to the Bay Area to live near GE Digital’s headquarters in San Ramon, California. After they have worked so hard on their success, he says he is looking forward to getting home early enough most nights to enjoy a home-cooked dinner with his wife.

The post What’s Cooking? How Bit Stew, GE’s Latest Digital Acquisition, Spices Up The Industrial Internet Of Things appeared first on GE Reports.

One day, when he was still barely a teenager, the film director Steven Spielberg came to visit his father, Arnold, at work. It was the late 1950s and the elder Spielberg was building computers for GE in Phoenix. His designs included a revolutionary machine that a group of computer scientists at Dartmouth College later used to write BASIC, the programming language that revolutionized personal computing. “I walked through rooms that were so bright, I recall it hurting my eyes,” Steven Spielberg told GE Reports about the factory. “Dad explained how his computer was expected to perform, but the language of computer science in those days was like Greek to me. It all seemed very exciting, but it was very much out of my reach until the 1980s, when I realized what pioneers like my dad had created were now the things I could not live without.”

Arnold Spielberg, who will be 100 in February, may have been a pioneer, but standing in that bright room in Arizona he was in the dark about many things our digital future held in store. “At the time I never envisioned anything like the internet,” he said during a recent visit at his bungalow high above Los Angeles.

Surrounded by photographs with President Barack Obama, Hollywood personalities, family and framed patent certificates — he received 12 patents in total — Arnold Spielberg talked about computers, his love for science fiction and his work on Hollywood blockbusters such as Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar.” What follows is an edited version of our discussion. (As a bonus, follow GE’s Minds + Machines conference in San Francisco this week to learn how the Internet and machines now work together.)

GE Reports: When you started designing computers back in the 1950s, the technology was still very new. How did you choose that line of work?

Arnold Spielberg: I was always interested in electricity. I liked working with magnets, and I liked working with radios. I knew about Edison and Tesla, but not in detail. I got my first crystal radio set when I was 9. It’s basically a diode that can detect radio waves, and I played around with it. But I never could get it working until a radio repairman who lived next door helped me set it up.

GER: What else were you building?

AS: Once I saw an Erector Set in a hardware store. I went inside and asked the owner if I could use it to make a steam shovel and put it in the shop window so they could sell more Erector Sets. He grudgingly agreed and I sat in the back every day after school until it was finished. Later, I brought my mom over and showed her what I built. Sure enough, I got the construction set for Hanukkah. But I was also influenced by science fiction. There were twins in our neighborhood who read one of the first sci-fi magazines, called Astounding Stories of Science and Fact. They gave me one copy, and when I brought it home, I was hooked. The magazine is now called Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and I still get it.

GER: How did you end up in GE?

AS: I studied electrical engineering at the University of Cincinnati, and I got my degree in 1949. The first job I had was with RCA. I was designing electronic circuits for missile systems. When they started working on computers, I joined that group. After that, I moved to GE.

I joined GE’s computer department in Schenectady, New York, in 1955. My first job was designing circuits for the first computer process controls. The department was just starting. I stayed at the YMCA and visited my family, which was still back in New Jersey, on the weekends.

Top: Arnold Spielberg at his house in Los Angeles in 2016. Image credit: GE Reports. Above: Spielberg helped build computers that monitored steel mills, steam turbines and other technology. His GE-225 machine even correctly predicted election results. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GER: Who were the computers for?

AS: The first ones were used for the industrial market. Our customers were paper mills and steel mills like Jones and Laughlin Steel Company in Pittsburgh, Youngstown Sheet and Tube in Ohio, and McLouth Steel in Michigan. They were the first customers ever to have a control system for a hot strip mill.

GER: What did the computers do?

AS: The first computers I built were data-acquisition systems. Their job was to monitor defects. They were a wire-programmed system, which means that they were uniquely designed to do just that job. Another computer called GE-312 monitored a turbine for Southern California Edison. We didn’t dare to control it because that required stops and starts, which could have endangered the machine’s life. The function then was just to make sure that it stayed within specified temperature ranges and that all the contacts were opened or closed as prescribed.

Students and professors at Dartmouth University used a GE-225 machine like the one pictured above to write the first version of BASIC in 1964. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GER: Tell me about the computer Dartmouth used to write BASIC.

AS: Unlike the previous computers, the GE-225 — as it was called — was a business computer. It stored its own software, handling the input and output of data. We relocated the factory to Phoenix and sold it within GE as well as to the external market. GE used them for general business applications and some scientific work, but mostly to do business processing. I was in charge of the small-computer-systems group, whose job it was to design the circuits, design the logic, plan the system and put it all together.

Arnold Spielberg in 1961. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GER: How small was this small computer?

AS: The computer consisted of three racks of equipment. Each rack was 2 feet wide and 7 feet tall. There was air conditioning at the bottom of each rack to cool it off because the circuits ran pretty warm. The memory could range from 8,000 to 16,000 20-bit words. It had an auxiliary memory that could go to 32,000 20-bit words. The computer interfaced with magnetic tapes, with punch cards and punch tapes, among other things.

One of our colleagues, Bill Bridge, designed a computer interface for Dartmouth that could transfer information from the computer to dumb terminals. They had no memory and no capability of doing computation. These were just input and output devices with keyboards. People could connect between 15 to 20 terminals to one computer and use that for time sharing. GE was one of the first companies to do time sharing and allow multiple terminals to talk to a computer.

Dartmouth had one of our computers, and they programmed it to develop the computer language BASIC. It allowed people to use the system to solve problems and handle data coming in out of the computer. Steve Wozniak may have used one such remote terminal to write software for Macs.

GER: Did your friends or family understand what you were doing?

AS: Back then I didn’t have that many friends who were interested in computers. It was like a big mystery to them. My son Steven came to visit once, and I showed him the factory and the engineering floor. I tried to get him interested in engineering, but his heart was in movies. At first I was disappointed, but then I saw how good he was in moviemaking.

GER: You were also involved in movies.

AS: I went to Caltech, and met with the astrophysicists Kip Thorne and Lisa Randall and several other scientists, and we sat there and brainstormed ideas about black holes for the movie “Interstellar.” It was a lot of fun because we kicked around all kinds of ideas about the size of black holes and how feasible they are and how likely there actually may be one.

GER: You didn’t turn Steven into an engineer, but he turned you into a moviemaker.

AS: It’s in the family now.

The post The First Spielberg Blockbuster: GE Computers [Video] appeared first on GE Reports.

As operations manager at a South African platinum mine, Percy French has faced huge challenges over the past few years because of volatility in commodity prices. The price of platinum has dropped in half, and at the same time the value of the South African currency, the rand, has fallen precipitously. To keep his mine profitable, French had to look for new ways to make it more efficient. He found sensors and software. “We cannot afford any loss of revenues from inefficiencies because our cost to refine one ounce of platinum remains the same even though we get paid half of what we used to,” French says.

French’s company, Lonmin Plc, about an hour’s drive from Pretoria, is the world’s third-largest platinum producer. The process of refining platinum works like this. Once the ore has been crushed and turned into dust, furnaces heat the concentrated powder to over 1,500 Celsius and blow air through it to remove iron and sulfur impurities. This helps to shrink its mass before the refining process. A mix of chemicals and heat are repeatedly applied to the ore until eventually you get pure platinum, which is used in everything from automotive catalytic converters to jewelry and computer hard disks. It can take up to six months and 7 to 12 tons of ore, put through several complex physical and chemical processes, to create one troy ounce (31.1 grams) of platinum, now valued at about $930.

Above and below: Lonmin willl be using GE’s Predix to optimize its platinum smelter. Image credit: Lonmin. Top image credit: Getty Images

Lonmin’s operations were suffering from bottlenecks, French says. Downtime in the drying area of the smelter sometimes caused the whole production line to come to a standstill, resulting in the platinum being ruined. “If we lose one hour of availability, that costs us roughly 1.72 million rand per stoppage,” French says.

Operators also struggled to calculate just how much crushed ore to mix with chemicals and water to produce the right amount of concentrate powder so it could be dried at a steady pace in the furnace.

French found the tools he needed to keep the plant running smarter in GE’s Digital Mine solution, which uses data gathered from sensors on equipment to make operations run more smoothly. Digital Mine helped make those calculations and kept powder flowing to the furnace at a steady rate, meaning the entire plant used less power ramping up and cooling down the furnaces.

The improvements made as a result of Digital Mine led to less wasted production time, French says, and helped Lonmin produce 1.5 percent more platinum from the mine. “GE products have brought stability to our operations, boosting the recovery of ore and significantly contributing to our bottom line,” French says. “A minor improvement in recovery causes a major improvement in profits, which can lead to significant cost savings for the plant.”

For example, French says that at a price of 10,800 rand ($804) per basket of platinum, the improvements made with Digital Mine boosted profits by 800 rand ($60) — a gain of more than 7 percent. French says Digital Mine has also helped cut sulfur dioxide emissions from the mine by optimizing the gas cleaning plant.

French has been using Digital Mine since 2007 and says it has become “very difficult to exist without it.” He says that over the past decade the software has been added to more and more operations, helping him to “highlight more and more potential areas for improvement.” As a result, he plans to upgrade his technology to leverage Predix, GE’s new cloud-based platform for the Industrial Internet, and Asset Performance Management software to add predictive-monitoring capabilities so that he knows in advance when equipment is going to require maintenance.

When applied to some of the smelter’s critical equipment, including fans and blowers, Lonmin can avoid costly, unplanned downtime, French says.

GE Digital Mine Global Strategic Marketing Leader Kevin Shikoluk says the mining industry could particularly benefit from following Lonmin’s example by adding digital capabilities, particularly real-time, data-driven insights. He says the world’s top 40 mining firms alone had 2014 operating expenses of $531 billion and that if they captured a 1 percent efficiency improvement they would yield $5.1 billion annually.

The post This Is What We Call Data Mining: Software Is Helping This Platinum Operator Boost Production appeared first on GE Reports.

It’s been a year since GE opened Predix, its operating system for the Industrial Internet, to outside companies. Since then, it has enabled engineers to write apps, harvest data from trains, planes, power plants and other technology and send that data to the cloud for analysis. For example, Schindler Group, one of the world’s biggest elevator companies, is using Predix to optimize power consumption of its elevators and escalators.

The next release of Predix, which GE just unveiled at its annual Minds+Machines conference in San Francisco, comes with a new edge. Literally. Rather than sending everything into the cloud, the Predix Edge System can start running analysis directly on the machines, or at the “edge” of the system — and gives industrial companies the ability to place machine apps anywhere they need to be, from the smallest medical device, to a controller, a network gateway or router, ultimately connecting to the cloud. This means that programs can run faster and machines can quickly use the analyzed data to fix themselves. “The edge is the place where the cloud meets the customer environment,” says Gytis Barzdukas, vice president and head of product management for Predix at GE Digital.

Top image: Drones connected to Predix will inspect wind turbines, power lines and other technology. Image credit: GE Reports. Above: Developers at GE’s Digital Foundry in Paris are connecting everything from wind turbines to drones to the Industrial Internet. Image credit: GE Digital

In the future, Schindler could theoretically put a small computer in each elevator to analyze that data on the spot and immediately make any needed corrections. Instead of waiting for Predix analytics on centralized computers to optimize operation, Predix users will now be able to run the system’s 100 apps at the machine level.

GE has already spent $1 billion developing Predix. Over the coming year, the company will invest more to use the new edge features to advance the machine-learning capabilities of Predix so that machines can learn to become more efficient on their own.

Today, more than 19,000 developers are building apps on the Predix platform, with India now the second largest home to Predix developers after the United States, says Barzdukas. GE is also working with partners such as Accenture, AT&T, Capgemini, Cisco, Deloitte Digital, Infosys, Intel, Genpact, SoftBank, Softtek, TCS, Vodafone and Wipro. They are training their own developers to build apps for Predix.

Barzdukas says developers today can access 43 software building blocks — or microservices such as time-series databases and blockchain-based security features — that make it easier for them to create apps. In the coming year, he says, GE will make those developer tools more visual, so that they are easier to use.

GE businesses will also roll out new services for Predix at Minds+Machines this week. You can find more information here and on GE Reports.

The post GE Takes Predix From The Cloud To The Edge appeared first on GE Reports.

Reliance Industries, the massive Indian holding and the country’s second-largest publicly traded company, said today it will start using Predix, GE’s cloud-based operating system for the Industrial Internet to optimize its operations and write applications for customers. Reliance said that it will partner with GE to develop Predix apps for the oil and gas, fertilizer, power, healthcare, telecom and other industries in which its customers operate.

Reliance will develop Predix apps as an independent software vendor. The software will draw on more than 30 years of industry data. The Indian company will also connect the apps to customers over its 4G network powered by Jio, a recently launched mobile voice and data service provider by Reliance Industries. GE will handle the software’s security and monitoring.

GE estimates that a 1 percent productivity gain could generate as much as $250 billion in value over 15 years in the energy and infrastructure industries alone.

There are some 19,000 developers already writing Predix apps for the Industrial Internet. GE software is helping everyone from tomato farms to wind farms become more efficient. GE’s digital division expects to earn $15 billion from software by 2020.

“India’s potential in driving the migration to digital is well appreciated,” said GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt. “The partnership with Reliance Industries will shape the future of the Industrial Internet not just in India but globally. The possibilities that it opens to develop solutions on our Predix platform for the industrial sector are endless.”

The post Reliance Industries To Build Apps On GE’s Predix In India appeared first on GE Reports.

Before GE acquired Wise.io, the machine learning company saw the future written in the stars.

In 2008, Joshua Bloom, a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, was struggling to make sense of tens of thousands of telescope images of the night sky — black pictures dusted with little white dots. The differences between the photos were too subtle for the human eye.

When Bloom shared his problem with colleagues from the faculty’s statistics and computer science departments, they pointed him to machine-learning software — sets of powerful algorithms that can crunch through mountains of data and spit out answers in seconds.

When Bloom unleashed the software on his millions of white dots, “he ended up building a more powerful telescope that was able to better understand some of the rarest phenomena in the universe,” says Jeff Erhardt, the chief executive of Wise.io, referring to marvels such as white dwarfs and other strange stars.

It was a “eureka” moment for Bloom, who with Erhardt went on to found Wise.io and is now the Berkeley-based company’s chief technical officer. Wise.io uses those same machine-learning and artificial-intelligence techniques back on planet Earth. The company makes highly sophisticated software that helps the business and industrial worlds make sense of their own galaxies of data.

Above: Bloom first used his software to classify white dwarf stars like Sirius B (on the right) in the Sirius binary star system located in our cosmic backyard. Illustration credit: Getty Images. Top image: A planetary nebula created by a star going supernova. This SN 1006 supernova remnant is located about 7000 light years from Earth. Image credit: Getty Images

The software builds predictive models based on maps of past patterns. These models are continually updated as the computer receives fresh information. Put that kind of software to work on a huge industrial machine, and companies will discover efficiencies they did not even know were up for grabs, Erhardt says.

How big are the savings? GE Digital expects software and analytic tools, which now include Wise.io, to bring in $15 billion in revenue by 2020, $1 billion of which will come from increased efficiencies.

Specifically, Wise.io will beef up the machine-learning apps GE already has on its Predix platform for the Industrial Internet, including the digital twin, which builds a virtual copy of any piece of equipment.

Today, engineers can use the twins to model different scenarios and decide when a piece of equipment needs to be serviced and when it can stay in use.

Wise.io’s machine learning will allow some of those decisions to happen without human intervention. Just like it did when it was analyzing the stars, Wise.io’s software will be able to find patterns that aren’t apparent to the human eye and make decisions and changes on the fly.

Wise.io, which GE bought for an undisclosed sum, already works with companies such as Pinterest, Citrix and Volkswagen. At Pinterest, for example, Wise.io analyzed thousands of help requests and found patterns that helped the social media company resolve customer problems much more quickly.

For example, inspectors at an oil and gas pipeline company can now take reams of data from acoustic pressure measurements and filter out unnecessary noise to focus on data that might signal the risk of a dangerous leak. This reduces the time to generate an inspection report from weeks to days, Erhardt says.

GE will be using Wise.io’s software across its many divisions, including healthcare, where machine learning could drastically improve diagnoses. “Machines generate hundreds of thousands of images,” says Erhardt. “The technology could augment and automate the process used to look for anomalies in a tumor or a cancer.”

The post This Astronomer’s Idea Just Opened A Universe Of New Opportunities For GE’s Digital Growth appeared first on GE Reports.

Every day, Exelon energy company produces up to 32,700 megawatts of electricity that supplies power to millions of customers across the United States. But the Chicago-based company produces more than just power. Its turbines and generators also spin out megabytes of data that different software programs then digest and comb for insights.

“They gather massive amounts of data across their generation fleet to solve complex energy issues, but they needed a single platform to look at these systems at a higher level to further enhance the value of that data,” says Sham Chotai, chief technology officer of GE Power Digital Solutions.

That’s why Exelon and GE Power, the GE division that makes power-generation equipment, decided to collaborate on ways to better leverage data for the benefit of Exelon and its customers. Using Predix, GE’s cloud-based platform for the Industrial Internet, GE Power’s software team started looking for new ways to gather insights from Exelon’s data. The first steps took them far enough that the companies have now launched a six-year agreement to use GE Power’s suite of software across the entire Exelon power-generation portfolio, ranging from wind farms and solar projects to hydropower facilities and nuclear power plants.

“With this big analytics platform, we can continue to improve our operations at our generation facilities,” says Exelon’s Brian Hoff. Top image credit: Getty Images

The analytics, in the form of new apps, are designed to help the power company predict when its systems will need repairs, allowing operators to schedule maintenance and ensure parts are maintained in a timely fashion. With the company’s nuclear plants already running at high reliability, Predix helps Exelon further improve efficiency in its power-plant operations. During a pilot of the technology, new optimization algorithms crunching data from Exelon’s wind farms helped boost annual energy production from its wind turbines by 1 to 2 percent, Chotai says. “We know there’s always more we can do,” says Brian Hoff, director of corporate innovation at Exelon. “With this big analytics platform, we can continue to improve our operations at our generation facilities.”

Exelon is now working with GE engineers to write new software apps it can use internally and also eventually commercialize and market to other companies.

“We’ve always worked with our customers, and with the Predix platform, we can move that work into the broader ecosystem,” Chotai says.

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