Streaming Data and Event Infrastructure - OSIsoft

Streaming Data and Event Infrastructure
OSIsoft customers and PI System users, have been dealing with this data reality for many years.
They know that “data” is an essential element of better decision making, the foundation of
operational excellence, innovation and sustainability and is essential for maintaining situational
awareness and readiness.
We estimate that PI System users, taken collectively manage over 235 MM data streams at this
moment and customers have been historizing their PI System data for over 20 years. The
number of data streams has exploded in recent years and will continue to grow exponentially
driven by the internet of things. We estimate at 300 MM the number of active data streams
that the PI Systems will be handling by 2012 year end.
Timely, easy and enterprise wide access to streaming data and events is a requirement of the
modern enterprise and a very tangible manifestation of the “Big Data” phenomenon which is
receiving so much attention lately. We are moving into a data, measurement and insight based
world where experience, knowledge and data are combined to drive value creation, drive
latency out of decision making understand change and increase predictability of targeted
outcomes.
Today, entire businesses are built around data and these businesses thrive and support
economic and social development. One of the best examples we experience every day is the
management of the electrical grid which is largely dependent on streaming data and events, in
very large quantity, to achieve the availably and the reliability of electrical energy supply. That
data that supports these businesses has to be as reliable and available as the service they
provide, in this case electricity. This is one of the reasons the industry is hiring the PI System
and OSIsoft to do this job.
Large data sets like the ones found in PI systems have notable characteristics:
VOLUME - The volume of data is large – a function of how many sensors, their sampling
rate and how long data has been collecting;
VELOCITY – it varies greatly, can be very high and will be getting higher; data may arrive
synchronously or asynchronously; latency can be negligible or significant and important.
DIVERSITY - Wide diversity of data types come into play - analog input, digital Input,
conventional and intelligent sensors, external data sources like weather, prices, non
persisting business data, etc.
STRUCTURE - Data payloads from intelligent sensors carry the data and information
about the data: its structure, its lineage, and its state. Systems must recognize and
leverage this ‘meta’ data creating and updating structure on the go.
ANALYTICS - Pre and post processing driving real time analytics are the norm and used
on a large scale at high speed and are an essential part of the maintaining deep
situational awareness.
What is the power of all that data?
This power of data is knowledge preservation.
This power of data is to enable assets to speak to us?
Last Saved May 4, 2012 4 of 20