The Industrial IoT Brings GE Digital and Bosch Software Closer Together

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GE Digital and Bosch Software, the software units of both industrial machinery giants, have announced today that they have signed a memorandum of understanding with the aim of developing integrations between their respective Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and accelerating adoption.

Under the terms of the agreement, the companies are focusing on promoting interoperability between GE Predix and the Bosch IoT Suite. Unveiled last summer, GE Predix takes a cloud-based, “gated community” approach to delivering IoT services. When Bosch IoT Suite officially launched in March, the company claimed that five million devices were already connected to the platform.

As part of the collaboration, the GE and Bosch plan to establish a new IoT open-source project based on Eclipse. The companies will focus their efforts on Eclipse hono for IoT connectivity, Vorto for data modeling and Leshan for lightweight, Java-based machine-to-machine clients. They are also contributing work to Eclispe UAA (User Account and Authentication) and ACS (Access Control Service) focused on IoT device connectivity.

“Our organizations both have a rich history of manufacturing products, big and small, so we share a common understanding and vision regarding the opportunities in connectivity,” said Rainer Kallenbach, CEO of Bosch Software Innovations, in a statement. As with the internet at large, building alliances is how major industry players hope to avoid fragmentation.

“No company can realize the IoT on its own. It is very important for Bosch to engage in business ecosystems and open source communities,” added Kallenbach. “The collaboration with GE Digital is another important milestone for Bosch’s connectivity strategy.”

GE and Bosch aren’t the only companies making big IoT news today.

South Korean electronics giant Samsung said today that it has partnered with Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), a Russian telecommunications company, to help advance IoT communications 5G cellular technologies. In addition to LTE-Machine and LTE Broadcast (eMBMS), the firms will explore Carrier Aggregation, Multiple-Input Multiple Output (MIMO), Multi-path TCP (MPTCP) and NB-IoT (NarrowBand IOT).

“We are confident that this collaboration will play a key role in leveraging advanced technologies to bring everyday benefit to the lives of Russians,” said Dong Soo Park, executive vice president of the Networks business unit at Samsung Electronics, in prepared remarks. “Based on Samsung’s strengths in 5G and IoT, we look forward to supporting MTS in solidifying their position as an innovative telecommunications leader by discovering new opportunities for the commercialization of 5G.”

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.