Representative End User Clients
Representative Automation Clients
Representative Software Clients
We reported earlier that the OSIsoft EMEA User Conference was held in Berlin, Germany at the end of September 2016. In that first blog we reported on the first part of the first general session. Here I want to give you a few highlights of the second part of that session. 
Ray Hall, responsible for engineering at OSIsoft, had several customers and partners present about testing and experimenting with beta versions of upcoming releases. Elgonda la Grange of Honeywell reported about the collaboration with OSIsoft on the PI Connector for OPC UA. Honeywell, which has acquired OPC UA provider Matrikon, is working on a Software Developers Toolkit (SDK) to provide native OPC UA to applications and automation equipment. In cases where classical OPC is in place, Honeywell developed an OPC UA wrapper, enabling these to connect with OPC UA clients. In a proof-of-concept (POC) project, OSIsoft ‘s PI System was connected through the PI Connector for OPC UA to a Honeywell Experion DCS residing on an offshore platform using the wrapper. The POC goals were to prove reliability of real-time and historical data transfer and robustness of data buffering of at least two weeks of data in case of outage, firewall-friendly secure connectivity, and simplification of the data infrastructure by reducing PI Systems to a small number of data centers. Conceptually, the capability to collect historical data through the connector addresses the buffering aspect, and the wrapper addresses the security aspect in the absence of a native OPC UA server. Common teams are implementing the solution while you read this. In situations where the lack of a native OPC UA server represents a major hurdle or effort to realize OPC-UA connectivity, the wrapper is a good transition on a roadmap of migration towards native OPC UA. 
OSIsoft next presented their own use case in using the new, easily configurable notification engine. Arie van Boven and Arco Stolk of RWE in the Netherlands reported about the Jumpstart workshops to get started on using PI Asset Framework. With 50 PI Systems and 700.000 tags, a centralized data collective provides information to the trading and load dispatching function. At RWE, PI Asset Framework (AF) servers were installed but not used. Creating a data model for companywide historical plant data can be a real challenge and the workshop helped the company to become familiar with AF based on a use case. As advantages of building applications using AF, the company mentioned that reliability based on redundancy and ease of modification compared to applications using SQL server. The company also uses “future data” to eliminate additional servers for predicted data and experiment with migration to Amazon Cloud to reduce IT infrastructure cost. Ray Hall announced a new version of PI Coresight is designed as integrated visualization for historical data dashboarding, ad-hoc analysis and data entry – for example for causes of failures or production stops, for a wide range of equipment ranging from cell phones to data walls. An editor to change views has been added to the product, and the integration with PI Notifications, AF and Events Framework adds to its potential benefits. John de Koning from Shell Global Solutions introduced a POC project on the use of PI Connector for Business Analytics. The company wants to be able to respond to operational questions and apply analytics to them. The company created a company-wide infrastructure and data-model, on top of which analytics applications are provided to enable users to autonomously do their analyses and create their reports. Installed PI Integrator for Business Analytics connected to Power BI and experienced the ease of use expected: the software was installed in a few hours, there was no need for IT support, in another few hours first reports were generated by the technologists and published in HTML5 to portals, refreshing and filtering is flexible and takes little work. OSIsoft has as goal to provide connectors to major packages and reduce the client’s work to configuration. The company seems to be successful in this respect. In a separate insight we will report in more detail on this use case and future plans to roll out the integration of Shell plant data with analytics applications. Brian Faivre and Tim Alexander of Deschutes Brewery in the US, reported about the use of the PI Integrator for Microsoft Azure. The company uses the Azure analytics capability for process analytics, which is noteworthy because an emerging application is to predict fermentation trajectories of different brands to control the brewing process more accurately. The company is contemplating using the predictions to automating batch control that could be considered closed loop control in the cloud! 
In an upcoming blog we report about the final keynote of the general session, by PAREXEL a company active in biopharmaceutical clinical research.
Ray Hall, responsible for engineering at OSIsoft, had several customers and partners present about testing and experimenting with beta versions of upcoming releases. Elgonda la Grange of Honeywell reported about the collaboration with OSIsoft on the PI Connector for OPC UA. Honeywell, which has acquired OPC UA provider Matrikon, is working on a Software Developers Toolkit (SDK) to provide native OPC UA to applications and automation equipment. In cases where classical OPC is in place, Honeywell developed an OPC UA wrapper, enabling these to connect with OPC UA clients. In a proof-of-concept (POC) project, OSIsoft ‘s PI System was connected through the PI Connector for OPC UA to a Honeywell Experion DCS residing on an offshore platform using the wrapper. The POC goals were to prove reliability of real-time and historical data transfer and robustness of data buffering of at least two weeks of data in case of outage, firewall-friendly secure connectivity, and simplification of the data infrastructure by reducing PI Systems to a small number of data centers. Conceptually, the capability to collect historical data through the connector addresses the buffering aspect, and the wrapper addresses the security aspect in the absence of a native OPC UA server. Common teams are implementing the solution while you read this. In situations where the lack of a native OPC UA server represents a major hurdle or effort to realize OPC-UA connectivity, the wrapper is a good transition on a roadmap of migration towards native OPC UA. OSIsoft next presented their own use case in using the new, easily configurable notification engine. Arie van Boven and Arco Stolk of RWE in the Netherlands reported about the Jumpstart workshops to get started on using PI Asset Framework. With 50 PI Systems and 700.000 tags, a centralized data collective provides information to the trading and load dispatching function. At RWE, PI Asset Framework (AF) servers were installed but not used. Creating a data model for companywide historical plant data can be a real challenge and the workshop helped the company to become familiar with AF based on a use case. As advantages of building applications using AF, the company mentioned that reliability based on redundancy and ease of modification compared to applications using SQL server. The company also uses “future data” to eliminate additional servers for predicted data and experiment with migration to Amazon Cloud to reduce IT infrastructure cost. Ray Hall announced a new version of PI Coresight is designed as integrated visualization for historical data dashboarding, ad-hoc analysis and data entry – for example for causes of failures or production stops, for a wide range of equipment ranging from cell phones to data walls. An editor to change views has been added to the product, and the integration with PI Notifications, AF and Events Framework adds to its potential benefits. John de Koning from Shell Global Solutions introduced a POC project on the use of PI Connector for Business Analytics. The company wants to be able to respond to operational questions and apply analytics to them. The company created a company-wide infrastructure and data-model, on top of which analytics applications are provided to enable users to autonomously do their analyses and create their reports. Installed PI Integrator for Business Analytics connected to Power BI and experienced the ease of use expected: the software was installed in a few hours, there was no need for IT support, in another few hours first reports were generated by the technologists and published in HTML5 to portals, refreshing and filtering is flexible and takes little work. OSIsoft has as goal to provide connectors to major packages and reduce the client’s work to configuration. The company seems to be successful in this respect. In a separate insight we will report in more detail on this use case and future plans to roll out the integration of Shell plant data with analytics applications. Brian Faivre and Tim Alexander of Deschutes Brewery in the US, reported about the use of the PI Integrator for Microsoft Azure. The company uses the Azure analytics capability for process analytics, which is noteworthy because an emerging application is to predict fermentation trajectories of different brands to control the brewing process more accurately. The company is contemplating using the predictions to automating batch control that could be considered closed loop control in the cloud! In an upcoming blog we report about the final keynote of the general session, by PAREXEL a company active in biopharmaceutical clinical research.