GE and Microsoft partner to bring Predix to Azure - Multi-Cloud becomes tangible for IoT

Microsoft is having its third large customer event of the year in Toronto right now, the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) and as to be expected there are a number of announcements to be made. Given its ramifications, I picked the announcement of both GE and Microsoft to bring the GE PaaS Predix to the Microsoft IaaS, Azure.

So let’s take apart the press release in our customary style it can be found here:

TORONTO — July 11, 2016 — GE (NYSE: GE) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: “MSFT”) today announced a partnership that will make GE’s Predix platform for the Industrial Internet available on the Microsoft Azure cloud for industrial businesses. The move marks the first step in a broad strategic collaboration between the two companies, which will allow customers around the world to capture intelligence from their industrial assets and take advantage of Microsoft’s enterprise cloud applications.

MyPOV – Good summary, also makes right away clear that GE and Microsoft are partnering for something bigger and brining Predix to Azure was only one part of the partnership... more on that in the analysis below.

[…] As businesses look to connect their industrial machines from the edge to the cloud, bringing Predix to Azure gives customers greater choice and flexibility to securely harness the power of data from machines and systems of intelligence. Companies worldwide will be able to bridge the divide between the operational and information technologies that make up the Industrial Internet of Things.

MyPOV – Good to see a description of the opportunity, and stating the main benefit for customers, more choice and flexibility – always a win for customers. Microsoft also got mention on what the company is banking a lot (and CEO Nadella talks about) – systems of intelligence. And GE got in the IoT moniker of the ‘Industrial Internet of Things’.

“Connecting industrial machines to the internet through the cloud is a huge step toward simplifying business processes and reimagining how work gets done,” said Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE. “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.”

MyPOV – Good quote by Immelt, maybe a tad too much on the information discovery side, less on that aspect that IoT platforms need to (and do) steer the things, too. But it maybe the extent of the partnership with Microsoft at the moment.

As the shift to a more industrialized information age continues, the opportunity to deliver new digital solutions, insights and increased efficiencies is accelerating the need for higher level services. GE’s Predix platform is already helping industrial customers rapidly build, securely deploy and effectively operate industrial applications. Bringing Predix to Azure means those same customers will now have access to additional capabilities such as natural language technology, artificial intelligence, advanced data visualization and enterprise application integration.

MyPOV – And here we read what Predix really is – a purpose built PaaS for IoT. And good to see the attraction to Azure comes from natural language technology, AI, visualization, and enterprise application integration. The latter comes to a certain point as a surprise, but interesting it found it in the press release.

Azure will support the growth of the entire industrial IoT ecosystem by offering Predix customers access to the largest cloud footprint available today, along with data sovereignty, hybrid capabilities, and advanced developer and data services. In addition, GE and Microsoft plan to integrate Predix with Azure IoT Suite and Cortana Intelligence Suite along with Microsoft business applications, such as Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Power BI, in order to connect industrial data with business processes and analytics.

MyPOV – Good to see more specifics and glad to see that data sovereignty found a mention, a huge concern on the right side of the Atlantic, and an area to which Microsoft has paid a lot of attention. Also good to see the Azure IoT Suite mentioned, anything else would have been an area of concern, but this means that lower level connectivity to things will come via / through Azure. No surprise on Cortana Intelligence Suite, that was already pre viewed earlier in the press release. And certainly no surprise on Office 365, Dynamics 365 (with new 365 addition!) as well as Power BI. This is ‘music’ to the partners at WPC.

“Every industry and every company around the world is being transformed by digital technology,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “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.”

MyPOV – Good quote for Nadella, surprisingly candid – that the partnership is helping Microsoft to reach new customers. Seldom CEOs are so clear, good to see.

A developer preview will be released toward the end of 2016, and Predix on Azure will be commercially available by the second quarter of 2017. More information about Microsoft and GE’s partnership will be shared at Predix Transform, July 25–27 in Las Vegas, and Minds + Machines, Nov. 15–16 in San Francisco.

MyPOV – Good to see tangible time lines and milestones in a press release. De facto this means that substantial deployments of the partnership will be out into 2017.

Overall MyPOV

This is the second ‘mega’ partnership Microsoft announces – after the Azure partnership with SAP, the focus with GE though is on next generation applications, building IoT solutions with GE’s Predix. Both partnerships are important for Microsoft as they bring ‘load’ to Azure, and load is what power the economics of scale that make IaaS providers competitive. Microsoft needs these partnerships to fuel Azure growth post the era of the current number one growth engine for Azure – Office conversions.

For GE it is likely a good move, after partnering with AWS for IaaS earlier, Predix becomes effectively ‘multi cloud’, something enterprise want from a multitude of benefits: Commercial acumen, data sovereignty challenges, performance, are just the first that come to mind. From an overall uptake of Predix, the move comes early, as adding another IaaS means more testing, Q&A and documentation efforts. And using some of the Microsoft specific advantages, e.g. in AI, Speech and Machine Learning, means that GE will have to find a way to fork / abstract code for Predix. Something GE would ultimately have to do, but the point comes early in the life of Predix and the ‘tax’ for the additional deployment would have to ‘paid’ from now on. On the flipside this would have to happen sooner than later anyway and GE has the deep pockets on its quest to become a double digit billion software company, so not too much of a concern.

Unconfirmed on the technical details – so we are speculating here – the big winner behind the scenes is Pivotal / CloudFoundry, in which both GE and Microsoft are investors. As CloudFoundry provides cloud portability / multi cloud support this is going to be key benefit and showcase for the PaaS vendor’s deployment capabilities.

The winner of all of this are enterprises that are looking to fuel their next generation application platform needs with the help of GE and Microsoft. A purpose built PaaS platform like Predix cannot be passed over easily by CxOs, now that Predix gains another deployment IaaS, things look even more compelling for the platform. Especially global enterprise know that the rollout of the top 3 IaaS players with AWS, Microsoft and Google does not cover the world well enough form both a performance (that matters more to IoT) and data sovereignty (that matters less to IoT, as legislatures are just getting up to speed on the Safe Harbor replacement Privacy Shield these days). And most large enterprises are already Microsoft customers, so when they show interest into IoT, time to negotiate and throw in some Azure credits for this (which we expect Microsoft to possible even to proactively). The only concern at the moment is the relatively far out timeline with end of 2016 – making 2017 the realistic product deployment, but enterprises can start with Predix now – deploy e.g. on AWS and then later to Azure, true multi-cloud in the plans.

So for now congrats to both vendors on a key partnership, with a not mentioned (CloudFoundry) 3rd party laughing on the sidelines of this press release.

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GE and Microsoft partner to bring Predix to Azure - Multi-Cloud becomes tangible for IoT

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