Interview: Bit Stew, From GE Digital Founder & CEO

Q. What is the “secret sauce” when it comes to Bit Stew, From GE Digital's end-to-end approach to data integration for the IIoT?

The key to Bit Stew, From GE Digital's data integration capability is our MIx Core™ technology – a data intelligence platform that supports Machine Intelligence that uses machine learning algorithms, reasoning algorithms and methods for automated detection and integration of data sources from any device and system. Bit Stew, From GE Digital's Mlx Core platform applies a schema first approach that allows industrial enterprises to integrate data rapidly by removing the heavy lift of data wrangling.

Q. What do IT executives tell you are the key challenges they face when it comes to data integration?

IT executives often tell us that too much of their time is spent on transforming data, from environments such as data lakes, into a semantic, contextualized common data model. The key challenges they face involve integrating data from disparate systems and sources (device/sensor level, enterprise-level, even external sources); all at different times, resolutions, formats, velocities and using completely different communication protocols and methods. They are looking for the solution to help automate complex IIoT data management and they need it now. Typical big data analytics projects that employ traditional ETL or Business Intelligence tools often falter under the complexity and scale of industrial environments. The rigid architecture and manual process associated with these solutions make them less than ideal for an industrial customer. It may not seem laborious to the untrained eye but ask any data wrangler, enterprise architect, or IT manager and they will tell you that ETL can take several professionals months.

Q. How does MIx Core enhance intelligence at the edge for the IIoT?

Hardware manufacturers are doing their part to solve the operations and analytics problem with distributed compute platforms. Applications running on these edge devices complete the picture to fully unlock the business cases of IIoT at the edge – decrease equipment downtime with advanced condition-based and preventative maintenance schemes; optimize cell/region/ sector performance; discover key relationships between process attributes and product quality to reduce defects and rework/ scrap, and so many more. MIx Core addresses this by leveraging machine learning libraries to create semantic data models based on raw sensor data. This takes ingestion and analytics to a higher level of sophistication, through machine intelligence at the edge, unlocking even greater business value through fewer data transformations and middleware required on edge devices. In addition, its federated architecture enables distributed intelligence across the other connected edge devices, enabling new functionality to be downloaded at the device level using plugins.

Q. Can you give us an example of how machine intelligence has solved real business problems for a customer?

Our partner GE's large enterprise customer needed a solution that would prioritize where resources were best applied in order to help reduce the potential for unforeseen events to its gas pipeline. To get there, GE O & G needed a solution that would reduce the time it would take to model, map and index the data from multiple sources and different data types. The cost and complexity associated with standing up an environment that would correlate data from multiple sources and bring together structured and unstructured data proved to be daunting.

Q. How did improving the data integration process for the customer provide greater operational insights more quickly?

In just two weeks, Bit Stew, From GE Digital modeled, mapped and indexed the data providing GE O & G with a solution to its challenges of accelerating time to value for its customers. No longer will GE need to spend months integrating and ingesting data allowing its IPS business to scale more rapidly. Bit Stew, From GE Digital's solution also allows GE O & G's to focus its software development investment on analytics such as creating asset risk profiles. The combination of GE and Bit Stew, From GE Digital has given the customer a scalable solution that it will roll out across its 15,000 miles of pipeline in North America. By overcoming the data integration challenge, the outcome was gaining a real-time contextual understanding of operations, something previously unattainable.