GE Digital Expands Channel, Loops In ISVs To Ramp Up Industrial IoT Charge

GE Digital is expanding its channel and looping in ISVs to help customers implement the company's Predix industrial Internet of Things platform.

Boston-based GE Digital says it hopes the program, for which it has been recruiting partners for the past several months, will enable ISVs to use Predix as the building block for new applications and to enhance industrial operations components such as maintenance, content development and asset management. Predix allows customers to analyze data generated by IoT sensors embedded in industrial equipment.

"The ISV program enables GE and its partners to make industrial apps more accessible to a wider range of companies, while helping them increase productivity through the use of the Predix platform," said Denzil Samuels, global head of channels and alliances at GE Digital. "GE is creating a robust marketplace by collaborating with companies that share GE's vision for digital transformation and bridge the gap between the industrial and IT worlds to drive successful business outcomes."

[Related: GE Digital Scoops Up ServiceMax For Industrial IoT Services Boost]

ISVs will be able to access the range of Predix's capabilities, data services and security services. They also will receive application development support, including training for rapid development of the application as well as preparation for the beta launch and general availability release with go-to-market support.

According to GE Digital, its ISV program has more than 100 registered partners with at least 35 actively developing a commercial industrial solution – and the company expects this number to grow.

GE Digital has been doubling down on channel partners as the company tries to increase adoption of its Predix platform. In February, GE launched the Digital Alliance Program, saying it was aiming to pull in "hundreds to thousands" of systems integrators, resellers and ISVs to capitalize on the fast-growing industrial Internet of Things opportunity.

"GE is trying to become a classic software company, and to that extent they're rolling out their partner program and want to create something with ISVs for more solutions and services around Predix," said Andy Sivaraman, senior vice president at Paramus, N.J.-based GE partner ITC Infotech. "At this point, they want their business to come through partners and ISVs."

One new ISV partner, Box, is helping developers integrate Predix with its collaboration and security features for powering content in IoT workflows – including maintenance and other procedures in industrial applications.

’Box is excited to work with GE Digital to help industrial customers securely access and manage their most important content in the cloud,’ said Jeetu Patel, chief strategy officer and senior vice president of Box Platform, in a statement. ’Through this partnership, Predix developers will be able to easily leverage Box APIs to build enterprise-grade content management and collaboration into their applications and accelerate digital business transformation.’

Nurego, Splunk, Mobideo and OAG Analytics are now ISV partners under the new program.

At GE's Minds and Machines conference in San Francisco Tuesday, the company also said it is expanding its Predix platform with a new suite of software and applications designed to put it in the hands of operators, business analysts and other users in nontechnical roles. In addition, GE unveiled a distributed system of software architecture and services designed to transform machines into intelligent assets and bring control and analytics applications to industrial infrastructure and operations.

The company also said it acquired Bit Stew Systems, a premier data integration platform for industrial IoT, to bring its data intelligence capabilities to Predix and other industrial solutions, and Wise.io, which is a machine learning and intelligent systems company.