GE Set to Launch New IIoT Business

With all the business news concerning GE this past year, it can be difficult for end users in the industrial sector to keep up. To help clarify the status of GE’s industrial automation technologies, I spoke with GE to better understand the impacts of these changes on their products. Among the first actions taken by GE this year affecting its industrial products involved the move of control and automation hardware products sold by GE Automation & Controls into the GE Power business. More recently, Emerson purchased GE’s automation hardware products, such as its PACSystems (controller), RSTi (I/O) and VersaMax (PLC) products. Emerson will continue to act as a channel partner to GE Digital, selling GE’s Cimplicity, Historian and iFix products. Last week GE announced that it will soon establish “a new, independent company focused on building a comprehensive Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) software portfolio. The company is intended to be a GE wholly-owned, independently run business with a new brand and identity, its own equity structure, and its own board of directors.” According to GE, this new company will house GE Digital’s IIoT technologies such as the Predix platform, Asset Performance Management, Historian, Automation (HMI/SCADA), Manufacturing Execution Systems, Operations Performance Management, and the GE Power Digital and Grid Software Solutions businesses.