GE Aviation acquires digital records management firm

Austin, Texas – GE Aviation has acquired Critical Technologies Inc., branded as AirVault, a privately-owned supplier of cloud-based digital records management. AirVault's expertise to digitally manage mission-critical records across an industrial supply chain network strengthens GE's ability to focus on asset lifecycle management and maintenance optimization for the aviation industry.

"Our focus is to help our customers and the overall industry to be more efficient," said Jim Daily, vice president and chief digital officer for GE Aviation. "The acquisition of AirVault combines some of the best people and records management capability with GE's domain expertise in flight analytics and engine diagnostics to bring disparate data together to drive operational efficiencies."

The combination of AirVault and GE will further enable web-based fleet maintenance records management across the aviation ecosystem with GE's Configuration Data Exchange. The ability to connect records and data across aviation companies and the IT systems they use to manage their fleets will drive productivity and data availability. Coupled with GE's Predix industrial cloud platform, this further strengthens the team in developing meaningful insights and optimizing operations over a wide range of aviation applications.

"This is great news for our employees and our customers," said AirVault CEO John Oldham. "Customers will continue to benefit from the same expertise and service for which we are known, while the strength of GE provides a platform for future innovation and growth. The addition of the Enterprise Content Management service with Predix delivers document management, business process, and data analytics to organizations requiring high levels of performance and compliance."

AirVault, with data center operations in Dallas and Oklahoma City, is a leading provider of ECM applications for global enterprises that require mission-critical performance, exacting security and regulatory compliance standards, specifically designed for the high-volume applications with millions of transactions per day. The company delivers packaged document management, business process, and related analytical data applications exclusively as Software as Service (SaaS) via a patented multi-tenant service platform. 

More than 40 major airlines and MROs trust AirVault with their aircraft maintenance records, including the largest airlines in the world. Today, AirVault manages the maintenance records for more than 50% of the North American commercial aircraft fleet for 4,400 aircraft tail numbers and 20% globally. AirVault manages more than 7 billion records in a private, secure cloud hosted at the company's fully redundant data centers for access by 40,000 users worldwide.

FOCUS Investment Banking LLC advised Critical Technologies in this transaction.

Source: GE Aviation