General Electric, one of the headline "founders" of the MxD institute had recently launched its "GE Digital" division and was aggressively pursuing an "Amazon Web Services, but for manufacturers" strategy via their GE Predix product.
GE Predix was, well, an "App Store" for manufacturing applications... in large part.
GE Predix was to be a commercial product and the cornerstone of GE's future business to which it invested billions.