GE will save $4 Billion with Cloud Overhaul
General Electric is one of the largest corporations in the world. GE seems to have a hand in just about everything including television networks, light bulbs, consumer appliances and even jet engines. It’s somewhat of a surprise that GE hasn’t already migrated many of its technical operations into the cloud. GE looks to rapidly change the way they deliver technology by aggressively moving towards a cloud delivery model. On May 8th, GE announced a deal with Box that allows GE to use Box’s cloud services for file sharing and data security.
Box CEO Aaron Levie was quoted as saying, “At face value, this is an exciting relationship to have.” Levie goes on to say, “It’s also a pretty important symbolic moment for the cloud and the startup ecosystem around it, as well as for IT.”
GE CIO Jamie Miller mentions, “It’s about speed and the ability to take advantage of innovation [in the cloud] quickly.” Reports show that GE has 34 datacenters located all around the world. GE has certainly taken advantage of the available cloud offerings in their sales and field management departments. Moving GE’s entire technical operations infrastructure into cloud could reshape the way that GE delivers functionality as an organization. The Wall Street Journal contends that GE’s IT department is tasked with having to host, support and develop over 9,000 internal applications. These applications span from open source to internal applications as well as vendor created applications.
This task may present a tall challenge for GE’s internal IT department. Box CEO Aaron Levie mentions, “It just takes so much longer to implement technology that these companies want to see that others have been successful already. When you’re finally getting to that stage of company like this, you tend to see tipping points where the rest of the ecosystem is then willing to adopt the tools.”
