[Info-vax] GE Predix Cloud Services

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Thursday, 25 February 2016 16:26:43 UTC, Stephen Hoffman  wrote:
> GE is now offering their own cloud services.
> 
> They've clearly been building and using it for their own products, and 
> now folks that don't have a good fit with Amazon or Azure have another 
> alternative.
> 
> http://www.gereports.com/ready-for-prime-time-ge-opens-predix-its-digital-platform-for-the-industrial-internet-to-everyone/ 
> 
> 
> This being a computing niche or two that some folks have suggested for 
> the VSI OpenVMS folks, too.
> 
> But OpenVMS currently lacks the upper layers and applications and 
> related mechanisms, unfortunately.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

You don't need working upper layers and applications for an exercise in
branding, and (with the greatest respect to GE) that's what this reads
like, not a product announcement of something that people can actually
buy (though you are invited to register for a free trial so it must be
for real, right).

Predictive maintenance, condition monitoring, near-real-time awareness
of what's actually happening on the shop floor, and so on is soooo
1990s. Apparently it's time it had a rebrand, and who better to help
fund it than Intel.

Folk might run their ERP in the cloud, they'd be insane to run the 
manufacturing execution system in the cloud. Not that that's ever
stopped management much so far. Cloud based performance analysis
and diagnostics might work though, assuming (!) they can be done
without breaking the existing systems and software. 

The gas turbine article linked to also seems to confuse the huge
quantity of instrumentation (and resulting data volumes) used in
development setups [1] with the relatively limited amount of
information routinely available (or needed) from a production
engine with standard instrumentation. No need for "big data"
there. E.g. the many gas turbines used for power generation in
the UK are typically controlled by a PLC and not much else. 
These gas turbines can be de-rated aircraft ones, re-engineered
for robustness so that "nothing can possibly go wrong" (or at
least so they don't need precision maintenance after every few
hours of operation).

I might look at using something like this for performance and
condition monitoring of a network of vending machines selling
Coke+Candy etc, where downtime isn't critical and timescales
can be hours rather than seconds. I might not use this for
managing and monitoring the activity of a car engine
manufacturing plant where equipment instructions and changes
of state are to be dealt with on timescales of seconds, and
failure has significant business impact. 

One size does not fit all.

But hey, it keeps GE's name in people's face, and why not,
especially as IoT alliances are hot again this year. 



[1] http://www.gereports.com/point-break-where-the-worlds-largest-gas-turbines-prove-their-mettle/