General Electric And Microsoft Align To Bring Predix To Azure

General Electric Company GE and Microsoft Corporation MSFT revealed a partnership, which would make the former's Predix platform for the Industrial Internet available on the latter's Azure cloud for industrial businesses. According to the companies, the move marked the first step in a wider tactical alliance between the two firms.

As a result, GE and Microsoft believe it would enable customers throughout the world to capture intelligence from their industrial assets. Customers could also take advantage of the software firm's enterprise cloud applications.

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, said, "Every industry and every company around the world is being transformed by digital technology. Working with companies like GE, we can reach a new set of customers to help them accelerate their transformation across every line of business — from the factory floor to smart buildings."

Similarly, GE'S CEO, Jeff Immelt, commented, "Connecting industrial machines to the internet through the cloud is a huge step toward simplifying business processes and reimagining how work gets done. GE is helping its customers extract value from the vast quantities of data coming out of those machines and is building an ecosystem of industry-leading partners like Microsoft that will allow the Industrial Internet to thrive on a global scale."

The firms quoted garner to say that 6.4 billion connected things were expected to be in use in the current year and the number is expected to jump to over 20 billion by the turn of the current decade. That also represented considerable opportunity for several businesses to fuel their own digital transformation.