Proximetry Teams Up with GE on Industrial Internet Technology

GE Digital Predix (GE Digital media kit image))

San Diego-based Proximetry, which specializes in software used to manage critical devices in the Internet of Things (IoT), said it has begun working to integrate its technology with Predix, GE’s cloud platform for the industrial Internet.

Under a new partnership with GE Digital, Proximetry said it worked with GE engineers to develop Predix EdgeManager, technology that is used to manage and optimize performance-critical devices across an IoT network.

No financial terms were disclosed under the partnership. In a 2010 interview with Xconomy, Proximetry CEO Tracy Trent said the venture-backed technology startup (founded in 2005) had turned profitable earlier that year.

A spokeswoman for Proximetry said the partnership with GE represents the company’s biggest alliance in a series of deals that Proximetry has struck over the past couple of years.

Since 2014, Trent has engineered a partnership with India’s L&T Technology Services on the development of Smart Grid applications for utility customers; embedded Proximetry’s software on Freescale Semiconductor’s line of IoT chips; and signed up with Qualcomm Atheros to develop software for wireless devices that connect to Qualcomm’s “Internet of Everything.”

GE unveiled Predix last August, describing it as a platform-as-a-service designed specifically for industrial data and analytics. Subscribing customers in aviation, energy, healthcare, transportation, and other industries could use Predix to capture and analyze machine data within a highly secure, industrial-strength cloud environment.

In September, GE said it expected to generate more than $15 billion in revenue from its Predix platform by 2020. GE said customers like BNSF Railway would use software available on Predix to improve its real-time railroad traffic planning and management. Southwest Airlines would use Predix software to convert data and analytics into “actionable insights” that would help the air carrier improve the efficiency of its flights.

To spur the growth of its industrial Internet platform, GE also set out to build an ecosystem of independent software vendors, technology partners, and integrators developing Predix-certified services. GE laid out the latest version of this digital alliance program last week during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.