GE Digital announced a new Predix Edge offering designed to help simplify edge-to-cloud computing and better enable businesses to more securely progress their Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) initiatives from pilot to production. GE Digital also introduced its Predix Private Cloud (PPC) solution, an on-premises deployment of the Predix platform, which helps to provide customers with the privacy, security, data sovereignty and data isolation provided by a private cloud infrastructure.
Predix Edge is designed to capture, process and analyze data in a more secure environment that can be managed locally or pushed to the cloud, executing more demanding workloads at the edge and producing insights closer to real time. With new functionality to help businesses further accelerate their IIoT initiatives, Predix Edge provides:
- Simpler deployment and management capabilities out of the box, allowing users to remotely monitor and manage their edge devices and heterogenous industrial data from a centralized management console.
- More rapid time to value by supporting edge application development for multiple programming languages, such as Java, C++, Go and Python, and coming pre-integrated for use with GE Digital's industrial apps, such as Asset Performance Management (APM) and Operations Performance Management (OPM).
- Support for data storage and analysis online, offline or with intermittent connectivity in remote environments, such as offshore oil rigs or disconnected use cases where internet connectivity is never available. Predix Edge then transfers data back to the cloud when re-connected.
- Edge-to-cloud security and compliance to help protect data and operations. The hardened, embedded edge operating system helps to manage connected devices and remotely deploy patches, giving users greater ability to control security at a deeper level.
- Lower latency application deployment closer to the originating data, which helps to enable companies with limited connectivity, regulatory requirements or other constraints with a method to further accelerate time to value.
Processing data and applying analytics close to the device can help to reduce downtime, better optimize maintenance schedules, add operational value, and further reduce network and cloud costs. Predix Edge and the Predix platform work together to provide distributed IIoT processing and analytics where they are in the most demand.
To help further simplify the IIoT process, GE Digital also unveiled Predix Private Cloud (PPC), an on-premises deployment of the Predix platform and portfolio that helps to offer companies higher levels of security and privacy.
Already commercially available, PPC helps to enable IIoT connectivity, data, analytics and applications, such as Predix applications or custom applications, to be hosted on-premises, providing customers with multiple ways to deploy the Predix platform. The on-premises offering helps companies operating in higher data volume scenarios to have more secure access to data closer to real time and also manage edge and disconnected environments. PPC is specifically designed to help meet privacy, security, data sovereignty and data isolation requirements based on a customer’s industry, region or country.
These new capabilities are designed to offer additional businesses flexibility when and where they operate, ranging from Predix Edge for more time sensitive needs, to the Predix Cloud for longer term storage and heavier analytics workloads, to the Predix Private Cloud for customers requiring an on-premises version of the Predix platform. These developments build on GE Digital’s solutions portfolio designed to help its customers better leverage the IIoT and make these technologies more accessible.