General Electric (GE) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have entered into a partnership to bring GE Digital's industrial solutions at scale to the Middle East, Africa & Turkey.

The collaboration is the first of its size and scope in the region, according to the two, and will focus primarily on cyber security solutions in operational technology over a three-year period, with the potential to move into other digital solutions in the future.

Ali Saleh, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer for GE Digital MEA said GE Digital Cyber Security solutions will be distributed through the HPE Channel Partner Network across the MEA &T region, with a particular focus on the Gulf, Levant, Northern Africa, South Africa, and Turkey in its first year.

"This partnership will enable our most important customers and partners in the region to begin the journey of digital transformation in a secure environment. HPE has the strongest partner program among peers to manage a partnership of this scope and scale, to bolster a secure digital ecosystem, and reach customers quickly through an innovative business model."

HPE and GED say they will now have the benefit of a partner network of more than 1,500 partners in the region to bring digital and cyber security solutions to industrial controls and infrastructure networks.

In an effort to enable this outreach, they add that HPE's Partner Ready Program will ensure that more than 340 HPE specialists and Channel Partner technical and sales resources will be trained and certified on GE Digital solutions to deliver the solution on HPE storage and server infrastructure.

Johannes Koch, Managing Director, Middle East and Africa for HPE emphasises the value that he believes partners will derive from the new deal.

"This agreement for Middle East, Africa & Turkey builds on our global partnership with GE to help our customers and partners take advantage of the Industrial Internet of Things and drive digital transformation across their business. The requirement for security in both information technology and operational technology environments, and the need to protect critical infrastructures, makes this an ideal opportunity for our partners."

GE Digital and Hewlett Packard Enterprise have also revealed that they will discuss bringing Predix-based applications to the market. Predix is GE's dedicated platform for the Industrial Internet of Things.