Dive Brief:
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General Electric's new CIO said he plans to focus on helping the company build the "Industrial Internet" – the name given to the company's efforts to connect industrial systems with sensors and software.
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The company expects more than 500,000 applications will eventually be written for its Industrial Internet platform.
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GE says the project will generate more than $5 billion in revenue this year and predicts it will be a $15 billion business by 2020.
Dive Insight:
GE says it uses the Industrial Internet to improve productivity and uptime by combining traditional IT systems with the capability to pull data off of sensor-enabled machines (also referred to as the IoT). GE started the Industrial Internet project in 2014 and says it's already seen a reduction of 10-20% in unplanned downtime.
The company is currently working on connecting 100 of its manufacturing plants to the Industrial Internet, but new CIO Jim Fowler says he will focus on helping the company build the Industrial Internet out even further and to improve consistency in company IT practices across the board.
"CIOs across the business have to work together to come up with a better strategy that will do it one way across the company," said Fowler.
