American global conglomerate General Electric (GE) has floated a new unit 'GE Digital' to position itself a leader in Industrial Internet of Things. The newly created unit GE Digital will integrate GE software center, knowledge of its global IT teams and industrial security expertise of Wurldtech. Bill Ruh has been appointed as Chief Digital Officer to lead the GE Digital. GE Digital aims to be among global top-10 software companies by 2020.

GE Digital provides GE's customers with the best industrial solutions and software needed to solve real world problems. The creation of new unit GE Digital is a step forward in the transformation of global major GE itself to become the world's premier digital industrial company.  

Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE, said: "It will make GE a digital show site and grow our software and analytics enterprise from $6billion in 2015 to a top-10 software company by 2020."

Bringing the total technology expertise of entire GE into one unit i.e. GE Digital, the US industrial giant is aiming to win the Industrial Internet of Things. GE will harness its horizontal capabilities counting Predix, software design, fulfillment and product administration. 

GE may announce more details about the new unit GE Digital at a forthcoming even 'Minds & Machines' in San Francisco during 28 September-1 October.

The Connecticut-based US industrial giant has been cutting down on financial businesses. GE has decided to offload assets worth $100bn by end of this year. Last week, GE sold GE Capital's transport finance unit to Canadian firm BMO Financial Group for $85bn.

Industrial experts forecast that the latest move will enable GE's software and analytics business from $6billion in 2015 to become a global top-10 software company by 2020. Bill Ruh, the former Vice-President and Global Technology Officer at GE, will have a major responsibility to transform the new unit into a global major. 

The formation of GE Digital came close on the heels of announcement of IBM, which has created two new business units to take care of Big Blue's portfolio in Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT), analytics, congnitive computing and education markets. 

Harriet Green, former CEO of Thomas Cook Group, has been appointed Vice-President and General Manager for the two units of IBM.

GE has been working on harnessing digital expertise and exploring Internet of Things for a long time. It announced a major investment in Pivotal in 2013. GE's major chunk of revenues is coming from services that support its machines.