GE picks AWS as preferred cloud provider
Oracle takes aim at Amazon with new cloud menu
Amazon Web Services announced Thursday that General Electric has chosen it as its preferred cloud provider.
GE began an enterprise-wide migration to AWS in 2014 and continues to migrate thousands of core applications to the public cloud giant. Already, GE businesses including GE Power, GE Aviation, GE Healthcare, GE Transportation, and GE Digital run several cloud applications on AWS.
"Adopting a cloud-first strategy with AWS is helping our IT teams get out of the business of building and running data centers and refocus our resources on innovation as we undergo one of the largest and most important transformations in GE's history," said Chris Drumgoole, GE's CTO and Corporate VP, in a statement. "We chose AWS as the preferred cloud provider for GE because AWS's industry leading cloud services have allowed us to push the boundaries, think big, and deliver better outcomes for GE."
In August, Reuters reported that GE has been undergoing a major shift in its digital strategy. The company initially planned on building its own data centers to host the GE Predix Cloud but abandoned those plans about a year ago. In addition to relying on AWS, Reuters said GE would be using Microsoft Azure by late October.
Last month, new GE CEO John Flannery declared in a post on LinkedIn, "GE is all in on digital."
Flannery wrote that the company is "doubling down on what we know works," with a focus on specific verticals.
"We will leverage what we do best in energy, oil and gas, aviation, healthcare, rail, and mining, and draw on our core assets and equipment to deliver the best value and execution," he wrote.