Rockwell signs licensing deal with OSIsoft

Rockwell Automation today inked a licensing deal with OSIsoft to package the software provider’s technology within FactoryTalk suite of products, said Kevin Roach, vice president of software at Rockwell at the company’s Automation Fair in Baltimore.
The pact, utilizing OSIsoft’s PI System, will have a two-pronged affect. OSIsoft’s historian will touch users on the factory floor at the device level, but will also go up through the enterprise and will connect at the plant level.
“The alliance significantly accelerates the depth and breadth of our historian-based offerings,” Roach said. “(Manufacturers) can continue using the current historian, but the new historian will offer new capabilities.”
Historians today connect to PCs so they must remain scalable up through the enterprise and back on down, Roach said.
“This partnership realizes our long-term vision of extending the scope of the PI System through a relationship that takes full advantage of its capabilities and brings our technology platform to new markets,” said Pat Kennedy, chief executive at OSIsoft. “There’s a whole class of users that don’t get exposure to data that they do at the plant level,” Kennedy said.
The OSIsoft technology collects control system data and provides data analysis and automated reporting capabilities. The technology identifies and helps reduce process variability and should lower costs by reducing manual operations.