OSIsoft Introduces OSIsoft Cloud Services

October 17, 2017 Off By David
Grazed from OSIsoft

OSIsoft LLC, a leader in operational intelligence, today announced OSIsoft Cloud Services, a new portfolio of services for securely storing, sharing and analyzing data with PI System technology in the cloud.

OSIsoft Cloud Services will allow existing PI System customers to more readily connect distributed facilities and assets to their existing PI System infrastructure or spin up new uses and applications for the PI System, such as predictive maintenance or leveraging PI System data for regulatory compliance. New customers, meanwhile, will be able to experiment with collecting, storing and analyzing data with the PI System.

OSIsoft Cloud Services will also serve as a foundation for integrated industrial digital communities where companies and people share data in real-time with supply chain partners, downstream customers and service providers. OSIsoft will offer OSIsoft Cloud Services as a managed service on a subscription basis that will expand over time. Additionally, partners will offer services and applications for OSIsoft Cloud Services on the OSIsoft Marketplace.

"Our customers are integrating cloud technologies, but they need to do so in a safe, secure manner. Reliability, security and data integrity are paramount," said Martin Otterson, Executive Vice President of Customer Success at OSIsoft, who announced the services at the OSIsoft EMEA Users Conference in London. "These new services are part of our strategy to give our customers the ability to take advantage of the PI System anywhere — at the edge, across their enterprise, and in the cloud — so they can accelerate their digital transformation."

Visibility Across Communities

Some of the early Cloud Services initiatives include:

  • OSIsoft is leveraging the services as part of the Red Carpet Incubation Program launched earlier this year by OSIsoft and Microsoft to accelerate advanced analytics initiatives that hinge on industrial operations data and analytics found in PI Systems as well as deep analytics capabilities delivered with Microsoft Azure. The program helps companies develop processes for preparing and transmitting PI System data so that it can be analyzed on Microsoft’s cloud platforms. RCIP participants include Barrick Gold, Toyota Motor Europe, Henkel and MPWiK.
     
  • OSIsoft and ARM will collaborate on ways to share data between a customer’s PI System (either on premise or cloud-based) and the ARM Mbed Cloud for connecting, managing and updating ARM-based devices. By linking the PI System and Mbed Cloud, customers can get a more comprehensive view of the activities across all of their devices in their enterprise. 

    "We’re very excited to be working with OSIsoft. The company has been a leader in helping industrial companies derive insights from machine data for decades," said Chris Porthouse, Vice President and General Manager, Device Group, IoT Services at ARM. "This transformation won’t occur unless these customers can trust the technology. Together we can help companies adapt to the Industrial Internet of Things in a secure manner that works for them."
     

  • Carnegie Mellon University, Lehigh University and Arizona State University are using OSIsoft’s cloud to capture data from laboratory equipment for conducting experiments in chemical engineering. OSIsoft Cloud Services free the department from installing and managing their own PI System and provides students a way to interact in a larger community and compare their results with others.

    "The Academic Community Service provided by OSIsoft will be used in the controls class to demonstrate the challenges and opportunities in the digitalization of the US manufacturing industry and how this revolution provides pathways towards community based data sharing and information processing," said Erik Ydstie, Professor of Chemical Engineering at CMU. 
     

  • A regional water management district in California has been using OSIsoft Cloud Services to serve up "dashboards as a service" for monitoring different parts of its operation. The utility is also examining ways to share the data with business partners and others.

OSIsoft In the Sky: A Quick History

Currently, the vast majority OSIsoft customers purchase the PI System through licensing agreements and manage it themselves or in collaboration with a systems integrator. The business model largely derives from the needs of industrial customers. The PI System provides real-time insights into critical operations such as productivity, energy consumption and safety. If this data is corrupted, lost or delayed, the result can be regulatory violations, a scrapped production run or serious injuries to employees. The vast amount of data generated by industrial customers is also a factor: some customers track millions of devices and conduct over 100,000 calculations per minute on the PI System.

Over the past several years, OSIsoft has been adding cloud functionality to expand the number of users and uses for PI System data. Over 70 companies, for instance, have developed Connected Services in which PI System technology is embedded into software applications or heavy equipment such as pumps to collect, structure and transmit machine data. These services are typically delivered as value-added subscriptions. PI Cloud Connect, another service, lets PI System customers securely exchange data via the cloud links.

Additionally, OSIsoft has developed an expanding family of integrators to simplify and accelerate the process of delivering PI System data to enterprise applications and cloud platforms such as SAP HANA, ESRI ArcGIS and Microsoft Azure, among others.

"Manufacturers, utilities, oil refiners and other industrial and large commercial customers are in the midst of a massive transformation. Similarly, we’ve been evolving our technology and creating new products so our customers can better understand their operations and seize this historic opportunity," added Otterson. "You’ll continue to see us innovate in the cloud, at the edge and within the enterprise. This is only the start."