The partnership was announced at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) being held in Toronto. Reportedly, customers will have access to capabilities such as natural language technology, artificial intelligence, advanced data visualization and enterprise application integration.
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, said:
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.
According to the company, developers will be able to build and run IoT apps that can take data from sensors and industrial equipment connected to the cloud via the Predix system, and use artificial intelligence (AI), speech recognition and data visualization capabilities within the Azure platform.
GE’s Predix, the industrial data-gathering operating system, is already available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Oracle cloud. The company claims that it will now pitch Azure integrated with Microsoft’s business applications such as Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Power BI, as well as, with its IoT Suite and Cortana Intelligence Suite. The integration is meant to let users connect their industrial data with business analytics.
While Industrial businesses can use it to build applications that connect to industrial assets, gather and analyze data, and provide real-time information to optimize industrial infrastructure, Microsoft hopes to broaden the reach of its cloud services within the enterprise.Je
Jeff Immelt, CEO, GE, commented, “Connecting industrial machines to the internet through the cloud is a huge step toward simplifying business processes and reimagining how work gets done.”
GE is helping its customers extract value from the vast quantities of data coming out of those machines and is building an ecosystem of industry-leading partners like Microsoft that will allow the Industrial Internet to thrive on a global scale.
It was also announced at the conference that a developer preview of Predix on Azure will be released towards the end of 2016 and it will be commercially available by the second quarter of 2017.
