GE and PTC Partner to Pursue Brilliant Factory Opportunity

The companies will bring to market a solution as part of GE’s Brilliant Manufacturing suite that leverages PTC’s ThingWorx® Industrial Internet of Things application enablement environment in GE’s manufacturing software portfolio.

29 September 2015 – GE (NYSE: GE) and PTC (NASDAQ: PTC) today announced that they are partnering to deliver an innovative manufacturing solution that will be available within GE’s Brilliant Manufacturing Suite. This new GE-branded manufacturing solution leverages the capabilities of PTC’s ThingWorx Industrial Internet of Things application enablement environment.

The result is an industry-hardened solution that features flexible dashboards and powerful data analytics integrated with GE’s software capabilities on the manufacturing plant floor.

The joint solution connects disparate systems – from the shop floor to the ERP – and offers a dashboard and differentiated user experience with consumer-like drag-and-drop capabilities tailored to each user’s role.

GE and PTC will align their respective global manufacturing sales and marketing teams to jointly pursue opportunities worldwide. As GE is one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies, the GE-PTC solution will be implemented within GE’s internal manufacturing plants as part of its Brilliant Factory initiative.

“The Brilliant Factory integrates engineering and manufacturing design, leverages data to run our factories much more productively, and optimizes the entire supply chain,” said Jamie Miller, GE CIO (above). “This solution gives us the ability to see that data clearly and easily in a format that makes critical decisions possible, so we can increase machine uptime and predict maintenance before it is needed.”

Leveraging PTC’s ThingWorx technology as part of GE’s Brilliant Manufacturing Suite provides robust manufacturing optimization capabilities coupled with:

• Role-based manufacturing dashboards with real-time manufacturing KPIs
• Standardized KPI models for all plants, connecting to heterogeneous system landscapes
• Collaboration, alerts, notifications and access to actionable data to make more informed decisions

“GE’s world class manufacturing plants have provided a testing ground for this technology,” said Kate Johnson, Chief Commercial Officer for GE Digital. “A united GE and PTC team is now poised to deliver a modular and robust solution to manufacturers badly in need of optimization through digitization.”

GE and PTC will also work together to certify ThingWorx for the Predix ecosystem.
”GE is a true pioneer in the use of technology to build advanced manufacturing facilities,” said Jim Heppelmann, president and CEO of PTC. “It is significant validation that such an industry leader has chosen to deploy our ThingWorx technology at scale. We look forward to collaborating with GE to deliver the promise of the Internet of Things to manufacturers around the globe.”

For more information, please visit http://www.ge.com/digital/partners/ptc.

Source: PTC

Alcatel-Lucent Acquires Mformation for IOT Security and Device Management

17 September 2015 – Alcatel-Lucent today announced the acquisition of Mformation, a leading provider of mobile and ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) security and device management solutions for mobile operators, service providers and enterprises. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Mformation, headquartered in Woodbridge, NJ, will be incorporated into Alcatel-Lucent’s IP Platforms organization, providing service providers and enterprises with a secure, scalable, application-independent IoT security and control platform for use across multiple industries including automotive, healthcare, utilities, manufacturing and the digital home.

Additionally, Mformation’s products will extend and enhance the capabilities of Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution to provide service providers with an integrated device management solution across home, mobile and enterprise networks. These end-to-end capabilities can address the increasing importance of the effective management and security for the 70 billion devices expected to connect to the Internet by 2020, and will simplify the management of converged networks expected to grow exponentially with the implementation of 5G.

Security concerns are on the rise as networks become increasingly virtualized, wireless devices become mainstay components of complex machines pervasive in every aspect of life, and unmanned connected devices become increasingly pervasive. The combination of Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive portfolio and Mformation together will allow network operators to manage endpoints and gateways, establishing an end-to-end IoT “chain of trust” built on industry best practices for authentication and data and network security.

“As connected devices become an ever increasing part of our social and economic fabric, we need to ensure that these devices, and the networks they navigate, are secure, reliable and efficient,” said Bhaskar Gorti, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP Platforms (left). “Mformation’s cloud-enabled IoT platform will enable our customers to rapidly deploy IoT services that can be trusted and managed efficiently,”

“Our portfolio and our customer base are highly complementary to Alcatel-Lucent’s Internet of Things aspirations,” said Dr. Rakesh Kushwaha, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Mformation (above right). “We look forward to leveraging our mobile and IoT security capabilities to enable customers to fully exploit the benefits of a connected world.”

About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent is the leading IP networking, ultra-broadband access and cloud technology specialist. We are dedicated to making global communications more innovative, sustainable and accessible for people, businesses and governments worldwide. Our mission is to invent and deliver trusted networks to help our customers unleash their value. Every success has its network.

About Mformation
Founded in 1999, Mformation is a pioneer and leader in mobility management solutions with more than 20 service provider customers around the world and managing more than 500 million devices.

Mformation provides service providers with a secure, scalable, application-independent IoT control platform that provides control and security across multiple industries including automotive, healthcare, utilities, manufacturing and the digital home.

Mformation provides service providers with deep technical expertise in device management standards and innovation in IoT protocol adaptation for connected devices.

Source: Alcatel-Lucent