Proficy Historian 8.0, that GE Digital recently launched. It is aimed at addressing steadily increasing industrial data as the number of industrial edge devices and sensors increases. New significant enhancements to our industry-leading Historian software are aimed specifically at collecting and aggregating industrial data and extending data migration from edge to cloud. Key benefits include:
- Putting industrial data to work: this scalable solution comes with advanced trend analysis and modeling to help users put data in context with business needs
- Extending asset lifecycle: optimized data aggregation helps operators see around corners by monitoring asset performance, diagnosing asset issues and increasing efficiency
- Total integration: Proficy Historian is tightly integrated with other GE Digital applications, enabling operators to seamlessly manage processes and allowing systems to work together intuitively
I connected with Dan Lohmeyer, GE Digital SVP, Product Management, this week to get some insight into the new Historian along with all the other software in the portfolio. He referred often to the “New” GE Digital. It was reformed following a significant reorganization of GE corporate. The GE Digital CEO has referred publicly to the company as a $1.2 B software company.
With GE bringing in a new CEO from Danaher, and he brought in other Danaher and industrial executives, the company is growing from a Silicon Valley software company to an industrial software company. I think we are all going to have to step back and reevaluate the company and its offerings to see how it manages the changes and perhaps brings improved industrial solutions to market.
It could be good since we all need a new blend of IT and operations technology in order to serve production and the enterprise better.
This release provides customers with a scalable solution for data collection and aggregation across deployments of any size and extending data migration from edge to cloud. The powerful updates include tag mapping, advanced trend analysis with annotations, and the ability to define an asset model, allowing users to put data in context with business needs. As industrial software becomes increasingly vital to production and operations, GE Digital’s Proficy Historian 8.0 is a fundamental building block for industrial companies seeking to improve operational performance, increase efficiency and reduce downtime.
“GE aims to leapfrog market leaders as part of its overall hybrid cloud/premise data architecture initiative. If you haven’t settled on a historian or want to unify multiple historians in a cloud database ready for advanced analytics and enterprise performance management, take a look at Proficy Historian.” says Joe Perino, Analyst at LNS Research.
Today, industrial companies amass millions of data points that require analysis and interpretation throughout various aspects of the production and supply chain as they adopt more and more edge-to-cloud enabled systems across their operations. Proficy Historian collects and distributes data that improves asset lifecycle and performance, allowing customers like automotive leader Subaru, consumer packaged goods companies Toray Plastics and Cascade Tissue Group and water utilities such as the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati to derive greater business value and increase efficiency. It is also the ideal data collector for its cloud and on-premise based Asset Performance Management and Grid Optimization solutions in the power generation, transmission and oil & gas sectors.
“Our customers are demanding more from their data and their equipment, and often there is a disconnect with how one works with the other,” says Lohmeyer. “With GE Digital’s Proficy Historian, customers are able to collect data from any edge device to analyze and apply insights throughout their plant operations, while also easily migrating data across plants in large-scale deployments.”
The Proficy Historian software solution is tightly integrated with GE Digital’s Proficy HMI/SCADA applications, including CIMPLICITY and iFIX, and Proficy Manufacturing Execution Systems. This integration enables operators to seamlessly manage machinery and plant processes. GE Digital also introduced a Linux-based Proficy Historian earlier this year that creates a standard time-series product for edge analytic applications. The Linux version of Proficy Historian revolutionizes data collection by pushing machine data to the plant level instead of polling from higher level systems, providing a new, more efficient mechanism.
Proficy Historian 8.0 is now generally available and follows a number of other recent investments in product innovation and enhancements from GE Digital this year.
GE Digital is transforming how industry solves its toughest challenges. GE Digital’s mission is to bring simplicity, speed and scale to its customers’ digital transformation activities, with software that helps them to better operate, analyze and optimize their business processes. GE Digital’s product portfolio – including grid optimization and analytics, asset and operations performance management, and manufacturing operations and automation – helps industrial companies in the utility, power generation, oil & gas and manufacturing sectors put their industrial data to work.
