If you ask the average person on the street what they think of when you say, “GE,” most people would probably say, “light bulbs” or maybe “turbines and jet engines.” As one of the oldest and most venerable industrial institutions in the US, we all think we know what GE is and what it sells. If you think that, then get ready for a big surprise; GE has not only gone digital, GE Digital is now an entire division of its brand.

Tripp Partain, global CTO, OneHPE, at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., and Richard Phillips, APM global technology leader at GE Digital, recently joined Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Paul Gillin (@pgillin), co-hosts of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during HPE Discover EU, held in London. (*Disclosure below) They discussed exciting new aspects of the GE/HPE team, as well as concerns around handling the large amount of data found in the Industrial Internet of Things.

GE’s move to a new digital world

Regarding the digital transformation of GE, “It’s breathing a new breath of fresh air into an industrial company. The way we do business is completely changing mindsets and perceptions, as GE, a 125-plus-year-old company, is becoming a digital, relevant corporation,” said Phillips.

He explained that digital is not just a buzzword for the company, it’s a completely different way of doing business, merging the traditional Operational Technology with the new Information Technology to the benefit of GE and its customers.

Predix, GE’s cloud-based operating system for the industrial internet, powers digital industrial businesses that drive the global economy. Predix-based apps connect industrial equipment, analyze data, and deliver real-time insights for GE and its customers. As part of the partnership agreement between GE and HPE, HPE helps power the Predix platform with its IoT-optimized hardware and software. Additionally, the Predix platform will be a preferred software solution for industrial-related use cases and opportunities at HPE.

Concerns of the industrial IoT

One of the biggest issues around the industrial IoT is that the scale of the data is so huge compared to consumer IoT. Rather than connecting toasters and refrigerators to the internet, GE is connecting jet engines, steam turbines and nuclear power plants; the type of data is vastly more abundant, and how it’s manipulated requires different handling.

“There’s an oil producer with a rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. If you think about the cost of connectivity to support a cloud infrastructure, that’s not going to work,” said Partain. Instead of taking on the cost of hooking up a satellite feed or running a cable on the ocean floor, they can leverage the compute power of HPE and have IT rig staff run the Predix platform on site, then sync back to the cloud how and when it is necessary, he explained.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of HPE Discover EU. (*Disclosure: HPE and other companies sponsor some HPE Discover EU segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither HPE nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE