General Electric’s Digital arm is being groomed by its parent to usurp the throne from physical machinery in terms of future profits. Home of strategic platforms like Predix and the Industrial Internet Initiative (III), the software and cloud services division is taking a position of rising power and influence across the industrial end of the Internet of Things (IoT). Its latest supporter is NEC of Japan, which will be deploying Predix, the cloud-based operating system and services platform for the IoT, in order to optimize its supply chain and factory operations. Applications using Predix APIs and running on its cloud platform can connect industrial assets, analyze their data and deliver real time insights for optimizing GE and non-GE equipment. Developed…