The Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet market opportunity will drive $225 billion in economic activity in four short years, according to. Jay Barrows, Chief Sales Officer for GE Digital, said at Softtek’s recent Digital Innovation Conference. It makes the $45.7 billion relational database market pale in comparison.
“It’s big. It’s massive,” said Barrows. And GE is in the middle, making it happen.
GE: Moving from Industrial Company to Digital Innovator
Barrows gave a riveting account of how in six years GE has gone from being one of the largest industrial companies in the world – making light bulbs and jet engines – to becoming a digital industrial market leader. And that means more than making products with a digital component. It means radically transforming the GE business model and how they deliver value to their customers. 
Barrows laid out a three-pronged approach to their new digital market focus, what he referred to as The Outcome Map.
The Outcome Map: Outcomes, KPIs and Capabilities
In making the transformation from an industrial behemoth to becoming the catalyst for the next industrial revolution, the first thing to do is to change your focus.
Customer Outcomes
Customer outcomes are the driving force behind everything. Uber’s founders asked themselves: “What outcomes do we desire that aren’t being met right now?”
The result was a taxi service that joins thousands of independent operators to millions of customers at the touch of a button on your smartphone through a thin software layer. This is the question that Barrows and GE Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt, as well as everybody at GE, are asking themselves.
Hypothesis of KPIs
To enable new outcomes for customers the next step is to come up with a hypothesis of KPIs by which you hope to drive progress towards the one outcome. What are the milestones and measurements you must track to ensure you’re on the right path?
Capabilities
Finally, you must determine what kind of capabilities you need to drive that one business outcome. Barrows said GE is currently on a quest to build on these capabilities by partnering with like-minded organizations, such as Softtek, to build the capabilities needed to ultimately satisfy the customer outcomes.
The Secret Sauce: Data Algorithms and Analytics
To leverage GE’s expertise in industrial machinery, and their new industrial-strength big-data data analytics capabilities, requires running multiple terabytes of data collected from billions of devices, through an algorithm engine that turns the data into insight you can act on.
This means, for example, being predictive. So now GE and other manufacturers can deliver a service that helps you avoid downtime in your plant or a breakdown in your car, instead of just delivering the factory or the car.
Barrows described three pieces that leverage the algorithmic piece of the digital puzzle to deliver these outcomes to customers.
1. Smart Machines and the Digital Thread
To most people, GE is the familiar logo on your average home light bulb. But by 2020 there will be 100 million connected LED light bulbs. There will also be 1 billion smart meters, and 152 million connected cars. GE devices will deliver 10 (to the 6th power) billion terabytes a day!
2. Analytics Applications
But all this data needs to go somewhere, and that’s where analytics applications come into play. To drive provide the algorithm that drives the insights that feed the KPIs that enable the customer outcomes, GE is recruiting a network of partners to build analytics apps that will tie the digital thread together. Softtek is proud to be one of these partners.
3. Analytics Platform
And none of this could be possible without an industrial analytics platform. Through GE’s Predix industrial internet of things platform, a complete ecosystem of partners and customers are building the analytics apps and enable the next industrial revolution.
Examples: Rail and Healthcare
The U.S. freight railroad system epitomizes the original industrial revolution: miles and miles of iron rails traversed by huge diesel engines pulling mile-long freight trains. But Barrows says railroads are now becoming “Data Centers on Wheels.” Through smart, interconnected components within the diesel engine, GE can drive outcomes such as engine reliability and on-time performance.
Through GE’s Healthcare Cloud, clinicians can collaborate and share data rapidly so as to better serve patients by pulling insights and delivering decisions from the Healthcare Cloud’s analytics engine.
Next Step
What’s next for the industrial internet of things? As I noted earlier, Softtek has joined the GE Digital Alliance Program and we’re excited to help build the applications that will connect the smart devices and help drive optimal outcomes for our customers. It will be an exciting journey, and a great opportunity, and I hope you’ll join us!
