Layoffs continue east of Silicon Valley, another batch at end of November. The frustrating part is that it is not like IOT is a tech market that is going through challenges, slow down or anything else externally, it is growing like crazy. GE Digital is missing it because of very poor strategy, pathetic execution, and lot of mediocrity. GE definitely does not understand what it takes to be a top 10 software vendor, and will never with current senior management. More layoffs to come for sure.
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IoT is a hot market because anything manufactured with the ability to be connected to the internet can be "counted" in the IoT market estimates. Temperature sensors? IoT. Smart Refrigerators? IoT. Server-grade CPUs? IoT. AWS Database-as-a-service? Consulting and integration services from IBM Watson? IoT. Antivirus software? IoT.
In reality there's a ton of consolidation going on (look at NXP/Freescale/Qualcomm/Broadcom for the latest example) as company revenue stalls out, and c-suite looks to slash costs (usually by consolidating and laying off). You need to look past "IoT" to see whether a market is really growing or not.
If you look at the revenue derived from services comparable to Predix (PTC ThingWorx generated $80M in 2016 for example), then you look at what GE was promising ($12B in digital revenue by 2020 powered by Predix growth), it's hard to see how the math could have ever added up.
Bill Ruh worked as VP of Cisco before GE and has a degree in computer science... hardly a noodle shop. Come on.
BR used to run a noodle shop in downtown Frisco.
What is the background of BR? Has he been in the IT industry at all?
What exactly do we do well anymore? The manufacturing supply chain is a multi thousand mile spaghetti pile of vended out processes.
We do random and arbitrary layoffs well, so expect us to keep doing that as long as there are poor working stiffs to lay off.
GE has decided to let the people that know how to do software, do software. Smart move, IMO, to abandon the wet dream of Jeff Immelt and get serious in doing the things we do well.