General Electric and Verizon have announced a partnership that will see the companies combine their machine-to-machine (M2M) know-how with the goal of creating a secure, wireless connectivity system for industrial internet applications.
The companies will work towards enabling GE’s Predix software platform, which connects industrial M2M sensors from multiple vendors, on Verizon’s M2M network.
GE and Verizon will also look to collaborate on a single global SIM for global M2M connectivity.
“The potential for transforming industries — including rail, aviation, energy and healthcare, as well as society as we know it — is tremendous, and yet the Internet of Things is a nascent, complex and fragmented market,” said Mark Bartolomeo, head of IoT connected solutions at Verizon.
“Driving adoption requires broadening alliances across the ecosystem. We look forward to using the power of our network and cloud platforms to enhance our long-standing relationship with GE so that together we can create new business models across the Industrial Internet to meet the increasingly complex demands of customers,” Bartolomeo said.
Bill Ruh, vice president and corporate officer at GE Software said IoT requires “new levels of connectivity,” which Verizon’s 4G network will help facilitate.
Given its strong presence in healthcare, aviation and manufacturing GE has been actively engaged in Internet of Things applications for some time now, and contributes to other industrial internet initiatives gaining broad industry support.
Earlier this year GE along with AT&T, Cisco, IBM and Intel founded the Industrial Internet Consortium, a membership group of telcos, research institutes and technology manufacturers focused on developing interoperability standards and common architectures to bridge smart devices, machines, mobile devices and the data they create.