Area Development
General Electric Co (GE) announced it has selected San Ramon, CA, in the San Francisco Bay Area as the location for its new $1 billion software headquarters. Plans call for GE to hire 400 software-related associates within two years to develop what the company calls the "Industrial Internet" of smart machines.

GE has leased 225,000 square feet of office space at the Bishop Ranch complex, and will open the facility by mid-2012, said Ed Hagopian of Sunset Development, the complex's developer. Currently about 50 GE software employees already are working at Bishop Ranch.

"GE could be providing one of the seedlings for a new industrial age," said Rob Enderle, a San Jose-based technology market researcher. "We will move from the current generation of unintelligent machines to ones that are interconnected and smart."

Engineers at the Global Software Center will direct these super-smart machines and software to will help companies in a wide variety of industries (e.g., healthcare, energy, transportation which require highly intelligent computers to improve operations, maintenance and other complex business projects.