With data gathering and management finding new avenues for usage in a wide variety of products and industries, building the software and architecture for handling that data is opening up its own paths for growth by broadening pre-existing tech fields.

At the GE Minds + Machines conference in San Francisco, CA, Lothar Schubert, director of Developer Relations at GE Digital, met with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-host of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to talk about GE’s shift toward more emphasis on software, the role of open-source in that shift and the importance of developers.

Finding new strengths

Schubert began the discussion by pointing out how now was a great time for developers, whether focused on software, architecture or data science, due to the high demands being generated by so many recent tech advances. He noted that there was someone responsible for every digital asset at GE, and finding the right people to generate those assets is currently one of GE Digital’s main drives.

Schubert also shared that, while GE was working with many interesting technologies, including UX technologies and data science, what had him most excited and had drawn him to the company was the opportunity to have an “impact on the world.”

To that end,Schubert explained how GE is making the shift from being solely an industrial company to an industrial and software company. According to Schubert, “Every industrial company needs to also become a digital company” in order to stay competitive, but finding the right developers was another important key to that success.

Speed and investment

In such a fast-moving market, there were few “standard applications that you can just buy from one of the traditional software houses,” Schubert said. Instead, those applications needed to be built and integrated to the specific environments, which called for developers suited to building in those environments.

To reach these skilled developers, “GE is very much invested in open-source, consuming lots of open-source, but also working with the communities, to invest and commit to open-source,” Schubert said. As data management continues growing in importance, thanks to an increase in sensors and improved means of handling the data, it is finding that more than the usual is needed, with physics in particular being a previously-undervalued skill in the field that’s now finding its time to shine.

And with an emphasis on growing the “cloud-to-edge and edge-to-cloud continuum,” along with driving data and reduced operations management each way along that continuum, GE Digital has no intention of slowing down on those investments and engagements anytime soon, Schubert concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of GE Minds + Machines.

*Disclosure: GE and other companies sponsor some GE Minds + Machines segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither GE nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Photo by SiliconANGLE