OSIsoft Releases OSIsoft Cloud Services for General Availability

SAN LEANDRO, Calif., June 11, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- OSIsoft LLC, a leader in data technology for critical operations, today released OSIsoft Cloud Services for general availability.

OSIsoft Cloud Services (OCS) is a cloud-native, real-time data management system for unifying and augmenting critical operations data from across an organization to accelerate industrial analytics, data science initiatives, data sharing, and other digital transformation projects.

With OCS, an engineer at a chemical producer, for example, could combine maintenance and energy data from multiple facilities into a live superset of information to boost production in real-time while planning analysts could merge several years' worth of output and yield data to create a 'perfect plant' model for capital forecasts.

OCS can also be leveraged by software developers and system integrators to create new applications and services or by enterprises and service providers to link remote assets.

"OSIsoft Cloud Services is a fundamental part of our mission to help people get the most out of the data that is at the foundation of their business," said Gregg Le Blanc, Vice President of Product at OSIsoft. "OCS complements the PI System by giving our customers and partners a way to uncover new operational insights and solve problems that would have been impractical or impossible before."

The Data Dilemma

Critical operations data--i.e. data generated by production lines, safety equipment, grids, and other systems essential to a company's survival--is part of one of the fastest growing segments in the data universe. IDC and Seagate estimate in "Data Age 2025: The Evolution of Data to Life Critical"1 that "hypercritical" data for applications such as distributed control systems is growing by 54% a year and will constitute 10% of all data by 2025 while real-time data will nearly double to more than 25% of all data.

Critical operations data; however, can be extremely difficult to manage or use. Data scientists spend 50 percent or more of their time curating large data sets instead of conducting analytics. IT teams get bogged down in managing VPNs for third parties or writing code for basic administrative tasks. Data becomes inaccessible and locked in silos. Over 1,000 utilities, 80% of the largest oil and gas companies, and 65% of the Fortune 500 industrial companies already use the PI System to harness critical operations data and solve these problems, turning it into an asset for improving productivity, saving money, and developing new services.

Natively compatible with the PI System, OCS extends the range of possible applications and use cases of OSIsoft's data infrastructure by giving customers and software developers the ability to unify complex operations data from distributed PI System servers and other sources and share it with IT, data scientists, executives, service providers and other employees and partners in a rapid, intuitive manner. Within a few hours, thousands of data streams containing years of historical data can be transferred to OCS, allowing customers to experiment with large data sets the same day.

Two Billion Data Streams

The core of OCS is a highly scalable sequential data store optimized for time series data, depth measurements, and similar data. OSIsoft has also embedded numerous usability features for connecting devices, managing user access, searching data sets, transferring data from the PI System to OCS, and other functions. OCS can also accept data from devices outside of traditional control networks or other sources.

To test the scalability and stability of OCS, OSIsoft created a deployment that contained the equivalent of the data generated by all of the smart meters in the U.S. over the last two years, or two billion data streams (100 million meters with 20 data streams each). OCS successfully ingested up to 1.2 billion data points per hour and was managing all two billion streams and their data within 48 hours.

PaaS for OSIsoft Marketplace Partners

Software developers are already creating services based around OCS. DERNetSoft is creating a secure marketplace for sharing utility and electric power data to improve energy forecasts and peak shaving strategies. Meanwhile, others are collaborating with customers to use OCS in efforts to bolster well integrity at oil drilling sites, predict maintenance problems, and reduce energy consumption. OSIsoft partners developing OCS enabled applications and services include Petuum, Seeq, Toumetis, Transpara, Casne Engineering, Diemus, Aperio, and TrendMiner. More about these services will be available at the OSIsoft Marketplace as they are released.

"Digital transformation requires the ability to compare data and outcomes across multiple plants and data sources," says Michael Risse, VP/CMO at Seeq. "OCS is a unified solution for process manufacturing customers to enable this type of analysis, generating predictive insights on thousands of assets across company operations to improve production outcomes."

Pricing and Availability

OCS is a subscription offering currently deployed in North America. OCS will be extended to Europe and to other regions in the near future.

Pricing is based on the average number of data streams accessed per month, rather than the complex combination of metrics typically used by other cloud offerings. This gives customers the opportunity to experiment more freely with their data without incurring unexpected costs.

"As the scope and scale of data increase, so will the number of people that need to use it on a daily basis. We want to make their experience as seamless as possible so they can solve more problems in less time with fewer barriers standing in the way of success," said Dr. J. Patrick Kennedy, CEO and Founder of OSIsoft. "OCS represents the latest step in a nearly 40 year journey and there's more to come."

1. IDC white paper, sponsored by Seagate, "Data Age 2025: The Evolution of Data to Life Critical" published April 2017.

About OSIsoft

OSIsoft is dedicated to helping people transform their world through data. For more, please visit http://www.osisoft.com.

SOURCE OSIsoft