General Electric Co. and Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to align their cloud efforts more closely across several important areas, in a move designed to address the rapid spread of connected devices.

The push builds on the cloud partnership that the companies struck in 2016. The deal saw GE tap Microsoft’s Azure to host its cloud-based Predix platform, which enables industrial companies to analyze data from their Internet-connected equipment and sensors.

GE plans to “standardize” the offering on Azure as part of the expanded collaboration. The initiative has several elements, most notably the creation of new integrations between the offerings.

GE will “deeply integrate” Predix with a number of Azure services, including the platform’s built-in tools for managing connected devices and performing data analytics. Another product on the checklist is PowerBI, Microsoft’s business intelligence service. GE will explore connecting Predix not only with the tool itself but also the custom PowerApps modules that are available from Microsoft partners.

The companies’ newly expanded collaboration could potentially even bring Predix to on-premises data centers. On top of PowerBI, GE and Microsoft will look into making the platform work with Azure Stack, an offering that enables enterprises to run core Azure services in their private data centers.

The other elements of the new push are more business-oriented. GE will create a joint go-to-market operation with Microsoft that will include a co-selling initiative, as well as move certain internal applications to Azure. That includes the in-house Predix deployments used by its diagnostics centers and internal manufacturing groups. 

The latter move may hold more significance than initially meets the eye. GE specified that it will migrate a “wide range of IT workloads and productivity tools” to Azure, which is notable because the company last year named rival Amazon Web Services Inc. as its preferred cloud provider for internal applications. GE said at the time it was running more than 2,000 workloads on AWS.

The expanded partnership marks a big win for Microsoft. GE said that its internal Predix deployments alone contain petabytes of data, while customers and partners have built thousands of applications atop the platform. All this should translate into significant cloud revenue for Microsoft, especially when taking into account the upselling opportunities that its new go-to-market push with GE should create.

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