Reliance Industries, GE form global partnership for $25 billion industrial IoT biz

Reliance Industries and GE on Thursday announced a global partnership to built digital solutions for $25 billion worth industrial internet of things (IIoT) business.

"RIL and GE will work together to build out joint applications on GE's Predix platform," said a joint statement.

"The first-of-its-kind partnership marks the coming together of two of the world's largest industrial conglomerates to provide Industrial IoT solutions to customers in oil and gas, fertiliser, power, healthcare, telecom and other industries," it said.

The announcement came in two days after Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) on Tuesday announced the launch of launch of 'Unlimit', which is a strategic partnership with Cisco Jasper to provide Internet of Things (IoT) services to enterprise customers across India.

IoT products are connected to internet and can be operated from any part of the world using data connectivity like remote locking of car, controlling function of CCTV, water and electric meter reading using mobiles.

"The presence of ubiquitous high bandwidth connectivity and cloud services enabled by Jio will be a key enabler for the rapid growth of IIoT within India. It's time we brought smart manufacturing capability into India by providing value added IIOT solutions for the industry that will enable India's economic growth," RIL Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani said.

GE will provide its Predix cloud offering, Industrial Internet applications and data science expertise and RIL will develop solutions on Predix as an Independent Software Vendor. Predix is operating system from GE used for the Industrial Internet.

RIL will also offer nationwide connectivity infrastructure to customers through a 4G network of Jio, the statement said.. GE would offer the security, availability and monitoring aspects of the platform to RIL and its customers.

"India's potential in driving the migration to digital is well appreciated. The partnership with Reliance Industries will shape the future of the Industrial Internet not just in India but globally," GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said.

The potential for other revenue streams includes telecom, healthcare and agriculture, the statement said.

"A 1% productivity gain for companies creates around $250 billion value over 15 years, across these key energy and infrastructure industries. The digital market is growing at a fast pace with IIOT contributing the highest degree of growth at over 10%," it said.

According to Gartner, there exists a market opportunity of over $25 billion by 2022 for IIoT solutions across the four key industries of oil & gas, power, healthcare and transportation.