OREANDA-NEWS. May 14, 2015. GE Software (NYSE: GE) today announced its ‘Industrial Dojo,’ in collaboration with the Cloud Foundry Foundation, to strengthen its efforts to solve the world’s biggest industrial challenges. The Cloud Foundry Dojo program allows software developers to immerse themselves in open source projects to quickly learn the inner workings of the core technology and the unique agile development environment, as well as recommended methodologies for contributing code. GE also announced it will work with the Cloud Foundry community to develop and contribute open source code to the Cloud Foundry Foundation that will route all industrial messaging protocols.

By opening this Industrial Dojo, GE Software is enabling developers to better learn industrial intricacies by pairing with experienced developers, thereby greatly reducing the time-to-productivity for those new to a project. Through this program, GE is bolstering its commitment to open source development and Cloud Foundry, and ultimately promoting the next wave of industrial innovation.

“We are dedicated to the success of both the Industrial Dojo and open source project, as we strive to foster a learning environment for developers to absorb knowledge from other industrial software innovators,” said Harel Kodesh, CTO and vice president at GE Software. “Cloud Foundry is critical to the foundation of our platform and to our enablement of the Industrial Internet. By opening this Dojo, we will make huge strides toward solving the biggest industrial challenges.”

GE’s Predix, the revolutionary software platform for the Industrial Internet, is based on Pivotal Cloud Foundry, a commercial version of the open source Platform-as-a-Service. As a member of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, the team at GE is committed to contributing resources to promote the success and productivity of this open source community.

Enabling Cloud Foundry for the Industrial Internet

Also announced, GE will drive, in collaboration with Pivotal, creation of a “TCP Router” to direct non-HTTP protocols and better equip Cloud Foundry to connect industrial machines with IT networks. By donating this innovation to the open source community, GE will enable Cloud Foundry to be used in a variety of industrial applications and use cases.

Currently, Cloud Foundry only supports HTTP protocol, which is insufficient for industrial needs. Due to the volume, variety and velocity of industrial data, industrial machines typically use non-HTTP protocols, such as MQTT, CoAP and DDS, to connect to the Industrial Internet. However, this necessitates building cumbersome one-off solutions, requiring industrial apps to be deployed outside of Cloud Foundry to communicate and be consumed by other machines and apps. The TCP Router will provide support for various industrial protocols, eliminating the need to manage and scale these apps outside Cloud Foundry. In addition, the new Industrial Dojo will help bring other Industrial companies into this project.

“As Cloud Foundry fast becomes the preeminent open source, cloud-native application platform, GE’s new Industrial Dojo will give developers an opportunity to affect real change in their organizations by building the cutting edge software required for industrial innovation,” said Rob Mee, executive vice president of Research and Development and Pivotal Labs at Pivotal and PMC Council Chair and Board Member at The Cloud Foundry Foundation.

Since 2013, GE has developed and deployed Industrial Internet solutions – leveraging Cloud Foundry, in-memory and Hadoop-based technology – to support GE’s strategy of bringing consumer-grade capabilities to the enterprise. Last year, GE and Pivotal launched the first Industrial Data Lake, which provides data management solutions for the Industrial Internet, enabling rapid insights across fleets of assets and industrial processes, for data-driven business decisions.

About GE

GE (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter. The best people and the best technologies taking on the toughest challenges. Finding solutions in energy, health and home, transportation and finance. Building, powering, moving and helping to cure the world. Not just imagining. Doing. GE works. For more information, visit the company's website at www.ge.com.