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All Aboard the Smart Train

Dec. 20, 2016

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.

About the Author

Stephanie Neil | Editor-in-Chief, OEM Magazine

Stephanie Neil has been reporting on business and technology for over 25 years and was named Editor-in-Chief of OEM magazine in 2018. She began her journalism career as a beat reporter for eWeek, a technology newspaper, later joining Managing Automation, a monthly B2B manufacturing magazine, as senior editor. During that time, Neil was also a correspondent for The Boston Globe, covering local news. She joined PMMI Media Group in 2015 as a senior editor for Automation World and continues to write for both AW and OEM, covering manufacturing news, technology trends, and workforce issues.