GE Transportation is on track to create a self-aware rail ecosystem.
“I’ve been working on the railroad” will have a whole new meaning now that General Electric’s transportation subsidiary has acquired Iders Inc., a provider of onboard processing, storage, networking and communications technology that turns a train into a traveling data center.
Ider’s GoLINC, which GE has already been using, offers wireless communication, networking, video, data processing, storage and interfaces with both locomotive and third-party systems for easy data transfers. Today’s locomotives are generating more data that can be economically off-boarded, which is why GoLINC includes a Data Optimizer function for storage and extraction—the foundation of which is GE’s Predix-based business rules processing engine which provides configurable, logical processing of data.
“This strategic acquisition marks another milestone for GE Transportation in creating an efficient, self-aware rail ecosystem that helps customers achieve smarter outcomes made possible by sensor data and analytics,” said Jamie Miller, GE Transportation President and CEO, in a statement.
In other words, this acquisition and additional technology creates a powerful edge-to-cloud system that will take the locomotive industry full speed ahead.
