SAP and GE will collaborate on Internet of Things

SAP SE and GE Digital will collaborate on building an extended Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) platform for customers in the oil and gas industry, with an eye to adding manufacturing applications in the future, the companies said Wednesday.

Specifically, the companies seek to further integrate GE's Predix operating system with SAP's HANA Cloud Platform, to collaborate on asset management capabilities including SAP Asset Intelligence Network, and to design use cases to enable the "Things to Outcomes" vision for customers in the oil and gas industry.

Together, these steps could drive further efficiency, savings, and utilization by applying the Industrial IoT to clients' investments and assets, the companies said at GE's Mind + Machines conference in San Francisco.

"Enabling the owners, operators and makers of their equipment to share data and context is an essential building block towards the enablement of end-to-end processes and our 'Things to Outcome' vision'," Tanja Rueckert, executive vice president, digital assets and IoT, at SAP, said in a release.

The announcement is the latest step since the German software giant said in October that it would invest $2.2 billion over five years in an effort to build its IoT capabilities for supply chain users.

GE has also turned its attention to the supply chain software market, buying the cloud-based rail-shipment reporting company ShipXpress Inc. in September in an effort to incorporate digital technology into its traditional industrial operations.

SAP and GE could extend this collaboration to manufacturing and other supply chain areas in the future, as they continue their work with the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), an international network of companies and universities driving the implementation of the Industrial IoT.

Both companies have long-term plans to reinforce their ongoing activities and uncover ways to work together on standards to accelerate interoperability and convergence between IT and operational technology (OT), GE said.