Big Data in Practice

19 GE How Big Data Is Fuelling The Industrial Internet

Background

GE were born out of Thomas Edison’s revolutionary inventions in the latter half of the 19th century which brought electric lighting and machinery into homes and businesses for the first time. They were the first privately owned company to invest in computer hardware and have remained at the forefront of innovation for over a century. Today, their machinery is used in the generation of a quarter of the world’s electricity supply.

During the Big Data era, GE – a colossus of a company which generated revenue of almost $150 billion in 2014 and employ over 300,000 staff across their many subsidiaries – have unveiled plans to create what they call the Industrial Internet.

Parallel to the encroachment of smart, digital, connected technology into our everyday lives (smartphones, wearables, even smart light bulbs that Edison himself would be proud of!) a similar movement has been taking place in industry. In manufacturing, transport, finance and aviation, machines are being programmed to talk to each other and communicate in the name of increased productivity and efficiency. GE’s Industrial Internet concept has provided much of the groundwork for this transformation. As part of this plan, in 2012 GE announced they would invest $1 billion over four years in their state-of-the-art analytics headquarters in San Ramon, California.

GE’s machinery and systems are used in aviation, manufacturing, healthcare, energy production ...