 Here's your host, Jeff Frick. Hi, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are really excited to be out in San Ramon, California, at the GE Software Center. Talking to Bill Rue, the VP of GE Software, exciting announcement came out last week about the new Predix Cloud. We've been out here a couple of times, so thanks for having us out again, Bill. Thanks, Jeff, glad to have you here. Absolutely, so why don't you give us an update on the center and how you guys are growing? You know, it's a crazy time to hire people and you don't seem to be having a problem with that. Well, it's always a challenge to hire people. But with that said, I think we got a great value proposition because we believe that we're creating like this next, the next thing, right? The industrial internet of things. And if you think about that idea, we're connecting really important things, that's the industrial world, and then be able to take that data and be able to do things no one's ever done before with them. And now with the Predix announcement of the cloud, we can do it at a speed and scale globally that no one could do before. So for us, the idea of people joining is they get to work on really big important machines, really big important problems, the next generation technology, who wouldn't want to do that? Yeah, well, just the scale of everything that you guys touch is so large that these kind of marginal improvements on efficiency, on savings, on here and there result in massive amounts of savings and value creation. Yeah, I mean, one quick example is in a wind farm with software, we can generate 5% more electricity on a wind turbine. That equals 20% more profit for the customer. So that's a huge gain. And you can see that in every industry, one, two, three, four, 5% changes have amazing impact, big numbers. So let's talk about Predix cloud. What is Predix cloud? Why are you so excited about it? Give us kind of the 411 and we'll dive into it. For us, the idea of speed and flexibility is really important. We think that that's how people are gonna compete. So how fast can I connect the machine? How fast can I get the data? How fast can I deliver outcomes to my field or the people who are doing the work? I mean, that's really what it's all about. So for us, we've looked at what everyone has done in the cloud, has been able to accomplish on the consumer side and said, we want that same speed and scale for the industrial world. And the only thing we have to do is then add things like security in a different way. We have to think about different kinds of data because they don't deal with the same kind of large data we deal in healthcare, et cetera. So it's optimized for industrial, but built with exactly the same concept of speed and scale that the consumer world has done so well. So a lot of the cloud attributes that people love so much is it's flexible, it's on demand, it's connected and always available. There's storage, there's compute. So are you guys offering all those? Is there kind of a specific subset of kind of classic cloud functions that this offers? Is it just a better place to store? Is it a better place to connect? Is it a better place to share? Or is it a better place to do analytics? What kind of the classic cloud attributes does Predix offer its customers? Well, we're building on the shoulders of giants. So we're certainly able to run today we can run on Amazon, but we are also working with other companies to build cloud centers globally because nobody has a global footprint. So you can't go to somebody to give me a cloud. You in fact have to build it yourself. The second thing is if you look at what we're adding value on it's a couple of things. One is connectivity. How you connect to big important machines are very different than consumer devices. Security's different, real time is different, lots of things there that we're working on. The second thing is we deal with data types like take imaging and healthcare. Those are big, big images. So how do you deal with those images in real time in the cloud? We've dealt with that. Then we add in the idea of specialized analytics that are aimed at the ideas of zero unscheduled downtime or how do you manage a fleet? So on at the cloud level. So for us it's really a platform capability in the cloud for industrial connectivity and building these analytic based applications. And then we're riding on infrastructure being built globally. So as an example we'll also partner with China Telcom and build cloud capability on top of what they built. So everywhere we go in the world we're going to find people to work with and we're going to be at that higher level. Okay and is it a necessary requirement that my company and my industrial things have some interchange with your world or can I operate my industry and my analytics independently of being connected to a GE device or service? It has to be independent. In fact that's what we've said. We'll work with anybody. We'll work with our competitors and we are and we'll work with our customers. Obviously we want to make GE machines the best in the world and we're going to stay focused on that. But with that said, I'll give a great example. We're working with Pitney Bose who they're not a traditional customer. They built mailing and big mailing and sorting machines. And so this is an example of a partner somebody who does a different kind of business allowing them to go win in that world using the predicts cloud. And that's what we're going to do with Pitney Bose. And in terms of kind of looking down the road services they might offer, look at Amazon, we're just in Seattle is kind of the ground center if you will of this creation of cloud and kind of the growth of the cloud and really the forcing of cloud into the enterprise. Good for them. But you know their offerings have changed over time and they continue to add more. I can imagine with all the analytics capabilities you have and also this whole concept of one plus one makes three and a solution approach and an integrated approach which is why you have one software center and all your business units tied together. Will those be types of services that other industries can potentially leverage inside the cloud? Yeah, I think that we imagine that we'll have services that we'll provide but we also are working with others to provide services on the cloud. And I think because we're cloud foundry base which is this open source capability anybody can build microservices and we will enable their microservice to work with ours. So as a result it's both we'll provide capability that's best in class for industrial asset performance management but we're going to allow others to build any kind of capability and the beauty of it is that that builds an ecosystem for the industrial world. The idea of an industrial marketplace is what we envision this eventually turns into and we'll build the best things we can but we think the only way the industrial world wins is as a whole we enable an ecosystem because the consumer world has done this so well we admire that. How can we do it on the industrial side? Right, and talk a little bit about the role of open source. G's been around a long time. You built a proprietary big things for a long time. You've probably been operating on your own system for a long time and now the world is changing. Open source is a very different way to drive innovation. It's a very different way to grow software. Talk about open source in GE and how important it is and how you guys are leveraging open source. This is a great question Jeff because when I got here I'd say it wasn't in the DNA to do open source here but the fact is if you look at the way the best companies in the world are beginning to create their own platforms for their businesses open source plays a key role in it. So we moved in that direction and we did in not just open source open source standards, collaboration so we worked with Cloud Foundry we helped to create the Cloud Foundry open source capability, we're a member of that. So creating new ones, we have embraced a lot of open source in the predicts platform and then added value on top of it like everybody else we created the industrial and consortium to look to standardization and how do you make everybody's products work together and maybe have a way to certify things. So you think about all of that we've done all of those things not in the DNA yesterday but certainly in the DNA today. Right, right and you got all kinds of fun and interesting projects going on. I guess it's downstairs where we were earlier. They never let me down there because they are so creative down there they don't want to be bothered but a lot of great things going on and the beauty of the open source and what we're doing at the platform is groups can independently create value and then put it in and then everybody can leverage it. So different style of work here in the digital world for GE. And really the classic conundrum for a platform play is nobody buys platforms, they buy applications but can you build an application can you go to market really as a platform under the covers that you're disguising as an application. You guys already have applications you already have a big book of business so now you are basically leveraging building a platform almost underlay to support those various businesses using software and cloud. You know the world of platforms is changing and in many ways we are building an application that happens to be a platform. I think this is the way the world is going is that because of APIs and because of the way the technology is going is nobody builds this monolithic app anymore and we are building think of it as asset performance management and analytics as the capability. Well those are in many ways applications but the way we do that is delivering it rather than as a monolithic here you go kind of capability is delivering it in a framework that you can pick and choose those and then customize it to your own needs. That is a different way to build applications. That's always been the promised right of APIs and services. Well we're finally at a point where that works. So now there's two faces to an app. You can have the app or you can have the platform app that allows you to create these things at a faster rate and tailor them to your needs. We're finally at a point where at the second one the promise can be delivered today and that's what we're doing. Yeah pretty exciting. So I'm going to shift gears on you a little bit. So we're in your office, we got all the requisite hard hats and airplanes and turbines and stuff but more importantly we have Lucille Ball up on the wall in the classic shot when she's working at the candy factory. So what's the significant of Lucille up there and one of the classic gags of all time? You know when I first started here it was me and my assistant and this only goes back about three years ago and now we're about 1200 people here and as people came in, you know when you grow from zero to 1200 here and you integrate it with 10,000 more your friends globally in GE it's a pretty complex environment we live in. The second thing is I have to say the executives of the company they get behind this in a big way but they expect you to go fast and so what I always tell my employees I put them there to remind them that all of us are often going to feel that we're like that, we're overwhelmed. You know the chocolates are coming sometimes faster and you got to know when to tell the boss sometimes that everything has got to slow down a bit otherwise they go speed it up. So I always remind people that we're always going to move fast, speed is everything but we also have to be able to know when to slow down a bit. So I love that scene because it's a great management technique to learn when to tell your boss that it's time to focus a little bit. Yes, yes. I thought you were going to say it was moving to your next point of failure, right? There's always another point of failure no matter how you optimize the systems. Well Bill, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your time to let us stop by and really get the update on predicts. It sounds like exciting times and I don't know how many people are going to have next time we come out to visit. Well thanks, Jeff. We're going to talk to half of them when we come next time. Absolutely, all right. Well Bill Ruth, thanks for stopping by. I'm Jeff Rick. You're watching The Keyword, the G Software Center in Santa Monk, California. We'll see you next time.