Exelon Plugs Into Predix; GE Acquiring ServiceMax
At its Minds + Machines conference, held in San Francisco on Tuesday, General Electric (GE) made a raft of new product, customer and partnership announcements. It said that energy company Exelon has committed to the first enterprise software license for the full suite of GE’s Predix software applications. Predix is a cloud-based platform that collects, processes and analyzes data from a range of sources, including sensors integrated into equipment, in order to improve asset utilization, optimize business and operational processes, power cybersecurity functions and boost productivity. Exelon has been pilot-testing GE’s Digital Power Plant software, which is built on Predix. The company will deploy the Predix suite across its entire generation fleet of equipment—which, the company reports, has the capacity to generate 32,700 megawatts of power from nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric and natural gas.
GE also announced upgrades to its Digital Power Plant software for gas, steam and nuclear power plants. The new features include tools to help customers reduce unplanned downtime by up to 5 percent, reduce false positive alerts by up to 75 percent, and reduce operations and maintenance costs by up to 25 percent. It also includes software that provides power producers with accurate and timely plant operating capacity information, which energy traders can use to generate incremental revenues.
In addition, the firm unveiled a new software tool within the Predix-based Digital Power Plant family, the Digital Hydro Plant. The software extends GE’s digital solutions to the hydropower vertical. According to GE, it has the potential to reduce hydro plant maintenance costs by 10 percent and boost plant availability and revenue by 1 percent and 3 percent, respectively.
GE also introduced a new set of Intelligent Digital Substation solutions for the electrical grid, which is designed to help grid managers to reduce outages through improved asset monitoring, diagnostics and automation applications.
Lastly, GE announced this week that it is acquiring ServiceMax, a provider of cloud-based field service management (FSM) solutions, for $915 million. The acquisition provides GE Digital with enhanced capabilities to advance its Industrial Internet vision, enabling customers to immediately gain more value from their assets and find greater efficiency in their field service processes. Earlier this year, ServiceMax announced a partnership with PTC through which the two firms integrate field service management and IoT solutions.
Zebra Morphs Bar-Code Scanner With Smartphone in New TC5 Series
Zebra Technologies this week announced its latest mobile computing hardware for enterprise applications. The TC5 Series are touchscreen mobile computers running the Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) operating system. They support Zebra’s Mobility DNA suite of application security, development tools and mobile end-user apps. The devices, which include the TC51 and TC56, are designed with retail or mobile workforce applications in mind. The have a 1.8 GHz hexa-core 64-bit processor, a removable and replaceable battery pack, and a 5-inch display and customizable Active Edge Touch Zones for one-touch access to the most frequently used device features and apps. The devices support 802.11ac/r/k Wi-Fi connectivity, as well as a 4G LTE modem for wireless wide-area networking.
For data capture, the TC5 Series devices support a SE4710 imager to capture 1D and 2D bar codes, as well as a 13-megapixel camera, Bluetooth and a Near Field Communication (NFC) module. The TC56 also includes a GPS receiver. The devices support WEP (40 or 104 bit); WPA/WPA2 Personal (TKIP, and AES); and WPA/WPA2 Enterprise security and encryption.
SAP Announces New IoT-Related Products and Services
SAP last week announced that it has partnered with DESIGNA Verkehrsleittechnik, a parking services provider, and Bosch Service Solutions, a business process outsourcing arm of the global manufacturing company, to offer the SAP Connected Parking solution. This service leverages cloud-based software to enable parking-management systems and kiosks to use sensors, such as license plate recognition software, to control access into parking areas for large trucks or other vehicles that require regular rest stops.
Using the service, for example, long-haul truckers can reserve parking spots for their trucks in distant towns or cities prior to beginning their day’s drive. Then, access-control systems scan each truck’s license and allow it entry if the cloud-based system confirms a reservation has been made. In crowded transportation corridors, big-rig truckers often have difficulty finding legal, secure places to park during rest times. For fleet managers, the parking services provide visibility into each’s truck’s scheduled rest stop and confirms when each truck checks into and out of the secure lot.
SAP also announced last week a new development tool called the SAP IoT Application Enablement software, which provides customers with data-management and virtual-modeling services designed to enable them to create a digital twin of an IoT product. A digital twin is an enhanced virtual representation of a product, service or process, which combines sensor data, business data and contextual data. Customers can then use SAP’s HANA Cloud Platform integration service to connect data from smart things with business processes and applications. SAP claims that maintaining digital twins of products can enable its customers to speed their time to market, while increasing innovation and overall customer satisfaction.
myDevices Announces Dedicated LoRa IoT Project Builder
MyDevices, which enables end users to connect devices virtually to application or platform software through the use of protocol translators, has announced a new iteration of Cayenne, its drag-and-drop IoT network-development tool. Cayenne for LoRa is designed to make it easy for end users to build a network of devices communicating via the LoRa wide-area network (LoRaWAN) protocol. LoRa operates in the 868 and 900 MHz unlicensed ISM bands in Europe and in the United States, respectively, and transmits data at a rate of 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps over distances of up to 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) in rural areas of cities. Developers and organizations interested in building LoRa solution can use Cayenne for free. At the same time, any LoRa device manufacturer can bundle Cayenne with its hardware and make it freely available to its customers.
Tapestry Solutions Launches IoT Enterprise Sensor Integration Solution
Tapestry Solutions, a non-fully integrated subsidiary of Boeing and a provider of logistics and supply chain software, has launched a new software platform called Enterprise Sensor Integration (ESI). Designed to help businesses tap the power of the Internet of Things, Tapestry’s ESI middleware connects individuals, processes and data on factory floors, in supply chains and across an enterprise. By providing a standard infrastructure for data and analytics, ESI helps decision-makers watch inventory and assets move throughout the production process. The software synthesizes data from thermostats, as well as from temperature, pressure and humidity sensors, bar codes, active and passive RFID, Wi-Fi and GPS tags.
ESI is based on Tapestry’s Automated Identification Technology – Information Management System (AIT-IMS) technology, which is deployed at 50 Boeing assembly plants and used to decrease assembly time, automate asset receipt and payment, enhance inventory management and improved quality and safety. Pricing information has not been released.