According to the Wall Street Journal, GE will announce a $1 billion investment in software development over three years as it seeks to use software to make many of its products smarter and more profitable, as well as developing products capable of solving problems for customers.

At the heart of the investment is a new global software headquarters the company is building in northern California. The facility, slated to be opened by the middle of next year in San Ramon, Calif., will hire 400 software engineers and centralize its world-wide efforts.

The move reflects the growing role that software plays in industrial businesses, but it also puts the company more directly in competition with companies that are more focused on technology, like International Business Machines Corp. and Accenture PLC.

"More and more of industrial products internal complexity is concentrating in software," said Janos Sztipanovits, director of Vanderbilt University's Institute for Software Integrated Systems. "The expertise really has become an absolute core competence."

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