Of Technology Dec

GE’s $15 trillion ‘industrial Internet’ 4 | Secret CIO: Always connected, always distracted 8 Answers to mobile app dev problems 16 | Is innovation too incremental? 20 THE BUSINESS VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY DEC. 17, 2012 Chief YearOf The From big league Wi-Fi to analytics-based scouting, CIO Bill Schlough keeps the San Francisco Giants ahead of the game p.10 By Fritz Nelson Copyright 2012 UBM LLC. Important Note: This PDF is provided solely as a reader service. It is not intended for reproduction or public distribution. For article reprints, e-prints and permissions please contact: Wright’s Reprints, 1-877-652-5295 / [email protected] THE BUSINESS VALUE OFC TECHNOLOGYONT ENTS Dec. 17, 2012 Issue 1,354 COVER STORY 4 Global CIO Chief Of The Year What GE’s $15 trillion industrial Internet needs Bill Schlough and his IT team believe that tech innovation 10 plays a part in making the San Francisco Giants champions 8 Secret CIO What’s more important: taking in what’s online or what’s right in front of you? 20 Down To Business The Jolt Awards Our economic glass is more 16 These tools help mobile developers be more effective than half full Cover: Kim Kulish Kim Cover: INFORMATIONWEEK (ISSN 8750-6874) is published 22 times a year (once in January, July, and August; twice in February, March, April, May, June, September, November, and December; and three times in October) by UBM LLC, 600 Community Drive, Manhasset, NY 11030. 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Address all inquiries, editorial copy, and advertising to INFORMATIONWEEK, 600 Community Drive, Manhasset, NY 11030. PRINTED IN THE USA. 2 Dec. 17, 2012 informationweek.com globalCIO By Chris Murphy What GE’s $15T Industrial Internet Needs ere’s a stat sure to become trial Revolution.” (Read Rob Preston’s time data and what-if scenarios: PowerPoint porn in the commentary on this subject on p. 20.) “What GE wants to offer is the ability months ahead: General People think of the Internet’s impact to ask, ‘Has any machine in our entire Electric predicts that the as centered on entertainment and so- system ever had X, Y and Z factors, and H“industrial Internet” could add $10 tril- cial networks, Annunziata says. That’s what happened four hours later?’ GE’s lion to $15 trillion to the world econ- why GE spends much of the report try- systems today would take about 30 days omy in the next 20 years. ing to quantify the industrial Internet’s to answer that question — if they could Indeed, $15 trillion is a “wow, that’s potential in terms of economic and even answer it. GE’s working to combine huge” number sure to be dropped into productivity growth. its data management and analytics soft- many a presentation, but it’s not the But this industrial Internet needs a ware with Hadoop-based data process- most important part of GE’s major new lot of technical and regulatory pieces to ing to deliver an answer in 30 seconds.” report on its industrial Internet vision. expand at the scale GE envisions. The most important part is why GE Based on my reading of the report, my Automation Must Increase would bother to calculate this projec- interview with Annunziata and Infor- As companies collect more data from tion and issue such a report. The rea- mationWeek’s reporting on the Internet more sources and then try to make son — beyond the marketing value — of things throughout this year, I think faster decisions with it, the complexity is that GE needs a whole lot of help the following changes must happen for soon exceeds humans’ ability to keep from other vendors, regulators, finan- GE’s growth vision to become reality. up, Annunziata says. People must con- ciers and users of technology before tinue to oversee the process, he says, this vision and its $15 trillion payoff Analytics Must Get Better but more machines need to automati- can come true. This report looks like This is No. 1 on Annunziata’s list of cally take actions. an attempt to rally an ecosystem. required technology advance- Automation requires more embed- GE describes an industrial ments. The cost of sensors is ded technology and, back to analytics, B A L C O I Internet where the ma- L O dropping, and the reach of better decision-making software. Au- chines it makes, such as jet G wireless and wired Internet tomation also points to the dark side of engines, power plant tur- is expanding. It’s getting the industrial Internet: Doing it right bines and MRIs, constantly cheaper and easier to gather means destroying a lot of manual jobs gather data and send it and transmit data. Data ana- and betting that economic growth cre- along over the Internet for lytics capabilities must improve ates enough new ones. analysis. The data might alert “to make sure the data that comes people to take action, like replace a available can be used in a productive People Need New Skills part that’s close to wearing out, or tell way,” Annunziata says. In GE’s report, Annunziata highlights three new job a machine to automatically take an ac- he describes this capability as “harness- growth areas: skills that cut across tradi- tion, like slow down a turbine that isn’t ing the power of physics-based analyt- tional lines of engineering and software needed. The idea’s more broadly dis- ics, predictive algorithms, automation development, creating a new role like a cussed as the “Internet of things.” and deep domain expertise” to know “digital-mechanical engineer”; data sci- GE created the report in part because how machines and systems operate. entists, who specialize in fields from cy- the whole idea of Internet innovation is Startups and established vendors are bersecurity to pattern recognition to data under attack, says co-author and GE developing big data analytics to make visualization; and user interface experts, chief economist Marco Annunziata, and sense of the Internet of things, and do who can design human-machine inter- “we thought it was important to chal- so quickly enough to make a timely faces that make a job easier and people lenge this view.” The report cites North- business decision. GE’s own software more productive. western University professor Robert unit is among them. In an article earlier We recently wrote about how Ford is Gordon’s view that the “innovations of this year, here’s how we described one recruiting more electrical and software the Internet Revolution are simply not technology problem GE software is engineers to do this kind of engineer- as transformative as those of the Indus- working on, that of combining real- ing-plus-design work, as software be- 4 Dec. 17, 2012 informationweek.com globalCIO comes a bigger part of why people buy But investing in the industrial Inter- industries. For aviation, it just created a car. As cars get more connected, such net is a microeconomic issue — com- a joint venture with Accenture called as sharing data car-to-car to know if panies make this decision one by one, Taleris to improve airplane operating there’s an accident or traffic jam ahead, project by project. The New York Times, efficiency by analyzing data to mini- these skills get more important. Com- in writing about GE’s industrial Internet mize downtime and waste. GE esti- panies such as GE and Ford need uni- concept, cited an example of a wind mates a 1% cut in fuel use would save versities to start training such specialists. farm operator upgrading its sensors and the airline industry more than $30 bil- optimization software, and netting a lion over the next 15 years. Policy-Makers And The Public modest 3% energy output gain. Infor- Two final things to consider about Must Be Convinced mationWeek earlier this year wrote about the business opportunity from the In- How much machine automation Union Pacific’s system to monitor train ternet of things. should people allow? We see this debate wheels and use analytics to predict fail- First, GE’s steps to spur an ecosystem beginning around Google’s self-driving ures, leading to a 75% drop in wheel- take a GE-centric view, focusing on the car. In financial markets, automated related derailments, but the next level industries where it sells products, so it’s high-speed trading creates controversy of investment and innovation hinges on way too narrow. Think about the agri- at times, such as the “flash crash,” when more effective sensors, better analytics culture industry using moisture sensors markets seem to overreact. and better data sharing to predict the to direct irrigation and thus use a lot less The risks are real, Annunziata says, effects on the entire rail network.

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