OSIsoft LLC, a leader in operational intelligence, released a new edition of PI Integrator for Business Analytics today to reduce the cost and complexity of industrial analytics and bridge the gap between operations and IT.
The announcement took place at PI World in San Francisco and Hannover Messe International in Hannover, Germany.
PI Integrator for Business Analytics Advanced Edition adds streaming data capabilities, delivering updates to Microsoft Azure and stream-processing engines, data lakes, data warehouses, or multiple cloud platforms as data changes occur. Streaming updates enable data scientists and machine learning algorithms to work with the most comprehensive and current data sets, allowing for better decision making and continual algorithm training.
“It can take days, and even weeks, of custom coding to prepare large data sets for analytics. PI Integrator for Business Analytics Advanced Edition can reduce that to a few minutes,” said Chris Nelson, Vice President of Engineering at OSIsoft. “By slashing the painful busy work of data prep, PI Integrator technology paves the way for people to experiment with industrial analytics and ultimately transform their operations. It also helps ensure that organizations operate from a ‘single version of the truth’ because it is designed to synchronize data across multiple destinations and platforms.”
Data Prep: the Achilles’ Heel of Digital Transformation
Operational and machine data are essential ingredients for digital transformation. Unfortunately, it can take inordinate amounts of effort to make it useful. Data scientists spend approximately 80% of their time on data preparation estimates Kevin Prouty, Group VP of IDC Energy and Manufacturing Insights, from his experience as a plant manager and engineer. Partly as a result, less than 5% of collected operational field data gets effectively used for improving the business.
“Operational and industrial operations data are fundamentally different than traditional IT data. This is one of the uncomfortable ‘discoveries’ IT departments are making with digital transformation,” Prouty said. “As OSIsoft is doing with its Azure support, data historians need to build out their own capabilities to get their customers engaged in a digitally transformed world.”
Customers and Use Case Scenarios
OSIsoft introduced PI Integrators in 2015 as a way to reduce the time, cost and complexity that can be involved in bringing operational data-the voluminous data sets generated by manufacturing equipment, chemical reactors and other devices inside industrial facilities and utilities–to business applications and cloud analytics. PI Integrators essentially clean, augment, shape and translate data so information can be used by other platforms. PI Integrators also help with the process of integrating insights back into operations so companies can reap the benefits of analytics.
OSIsoft customers have adopted PI Integrators and integration technologies to serve up operational data to Microsoft Azure, Hadoop, ESRI ArcGIS, SAP HANA, Oracle and other platforms. Customers that have taken advantage of PI Integrator technologies include CEMEX, the world’s largest cement manufacturer, which reduced the amount of time for extracting and preparing data from over 70 of its global sites for analysis in SQL Server from over 744 hours to less than five minutes. Deschutes Brewery, meanwhile, has been able to reduce production time for different beers by analyzing fermentation cycles through bringing PI System data to Azure.
PI Integrator for Business Analytics Standard Edition, released in 2016, prepares and translates data on a batch basis for business applications. The new Advanced Edition provides an additional level of performance to accelerate the process for training algorithms and enable analytics to work with the most current system of record.
“This is an exciting example of the intelligent factory at work. OSIsoft’s advanced solutions are driving an agile flow of data to insights to actions.” said Caglayan Arkan, General Manager, Worldwide Manufacturing at Microsoft. “This flow connects people and machines with business processes, which is critical to enabling quick, informed decisions.”
The Life of the PI System
The PI System from OSIsoft turns the vast data streams from sensors and other devices into rich, real-time insights for reducing energy, improving productivity or developing new products. The PI System can be found inside wind farms, national labs, rail networks, distilleries, data centers, Major League Baseball stadiums, over 1,000 leading utilities and over 90% of the world’s largest oil and gas companies helping people make critical decisions for their business. Worldwide, the PI System manages over 1.6 billion sensor-based data streams.
To learn more, please visit www.osisoft.com
About OSIsoft, LLC.
OSIsoft, a global leader in operational intelligence, delivers an open enterprise infrastructure to connect sensor-based data, operations and people to enable real-time and actionable insights. As the maker of the PI System, OSIsoft empowers companies across a range of industries in activities such as exploration, extraction, production, generation, process and discrete manufacturing, distribution and services to leverage streaming data to optimize and enrich their businesses. For over thirty years, OSIsoft customers have embraced the PI System to deliver process, quality, energy, regulatory compliance, safety, security and asset health improvements across their operations. Founded in 1980, OSIsoft is a privately-held company, headquartered in San Leandro, California, U.S.A, with offices around the world.
