Industrial “internet of things” edge computing demands that multiple parts — software, hardware, data, information technology and operations teams — work in tandem. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and GE Digital LLC are pooling their technologies in global initiatives to improve Industrial IoT and asset performance management.

“In the world of IoT, things are blurring a bit,” said Johannes Koch (pictured, left), vice president and managing director of Central Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at HPE. The IoT edge is not plain old software or hardware technology as we’ve known it, he explained. A new ecosystem is naturally springing up around the edge with a special role for industrial companies.

“What is happening on the edge is very much in the business of General Electric,” Koch said.

Koch joined Ali Saleh (pictured, right), senior vice president and chief commercial officer at GE Digital Middle East and Africa, in an interview at the HPE Discover EU event in Madrid, Spain. They spoke to Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Peter Burris (@plburris), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)

Data, digitization squeeze more from assets

HPE and GE Digital’s partnership began with a goal of understanding customers’ cybersecurity needs. This question is especially pressing in IoT, where on-prem security models are not well-suited, according to Koch. The alliance has grown to serve customers that need to improve industrial asset performance through digital transformation. Some of these projects are backed by governments in less-developed nations, like Kenya.

In the Middle East and Africa, industrial customers are realizing how digitization can optimize business, according to Saleh. “They’ve discovered that their industrial assets are smart and capable, but the data are not being collected,” he said.

GE has sought to change this with new ecosystem partners. Together they are developing solutions around GE Digital’s own industrial machine data analytics platform, Predix. HPE is one such partner. “This, I think, is where we find a very good connection point, because now we have software that actually can operate at the edge,” Koch said.

Some projects in healthcare institutions and other domains have shown asset performance jumps as high as 40 percent, Saleh pointed out. The GE-HPE alliance will continue to iterate in order to maintain improvements.

“It’s easy for the first iteration to show an incremental change. The challenge will be for the change to last, and this is where digitization makes it last and makes it impactful,” Saleh concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover EU event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the HPE Discover EU event. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE