US industrial giant GE has announced that it is expanding its enterprise-focused Predix Internet of Things platform, adding Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and cloud offerings to its capabilities.

Predix is built upon the large industrial equipment that GE manufactures, such as locomotives, wind turbines and jet engines, making use of the sensors within the machines to generate a huge amount of information that can help businesses drive efficiency.

Predix was originally created as a Platform as a Service solution, enabling businesses and third-party developers to create applications based on its data that helped on every level, from big data analysis to insight into individual components.

The Industrial Internet is growing rapidly, with data generated at twice the rate as any other sector and investment in smart infrastructure expected to exceed $60 trillion (£38 trillion) over the next 15 years.

With the introduction of IaaS offerings, GE will also be able to provide infrastructure services to run those applications, and a cloud service built for industrial data and analytics.

“Cloud computing has enabled incredible innovation across the consumer world,” said Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE. “With Predix Cloud, GE is providing a new level of service and results across the industrial world. A more digital hospital means better, faster healthcare. A more digital manufacturing plant means more products are made faster. A more digital oil company means better asset management and more productivity at every well.”