US industrial giant GE continues on its march to control the underpinnings of the industrial internet of things (IoT). It is opening up its own Predix analytics platform, which it has used for years to monitor its products from aircraft to generators, to support cloud services direct to customers. This is the latest move to further two important goals for GE – to develop new revenues based on technology and services, in order to offset stagnation or rising competition in some of its traditional equipment markets; and to use Predix to place GE at the heart of a set of de facto standards for the heavy duty side of the IoT. For the latter, the company has been extending the…