GE Digital recently announced that its Proficy Historian software will be the only true operational historian available on the AWS Marketplace, allowing companies to deploy in the infrastructure of their choice at scale. “Cloud-based deployment is expected to save companies in reduced infrastructure costs and improve system availability,” they stated.
We wanted to learn more, so we connected with Steve Pavlosky, director of product management with GE Digital. Take a look…
Smart Industry: What is special about GE Digital Proficy Historian software?
Steve: Proficy Historian for Cloud is the only cloud-native operational data historian. This means an industrial company can run Proficy Historian in their instance of AWS, allowing them to leverage their IT investments and align with their IT strategies.
Proficy Historian's highly efficient storage and on-prem/cloud hybrid data architecture delivers long-term data storage and there is no performance degradation when querying data from last week or the last decade. Its ability to bring data to the cloud simplifies the use of OT data and cloud-based analytics.
In addition, it uses standard APIs and Excel add-ins for third-party software integration for ease of data analysis. Proficy Historian also offers hundreds of interfaces plus the ability to aggregate data at the plant and enterprise level.
The solution is easier to maintain with no performance degradation when retrieving data, when compared to a relational database solution. Having a single data-infrastructure solution simplifies the creation of value from the data.
Smart Industry: What does it enable users to do?
Steve: Proficy Historian allows industrial organizations to bring together data from across operational systems (OT) into a single repository to simplify visualization and analysis. Some companies collect more data over time and, therefore, have a library of data to analyze that can span 10 to 15 years of data. This is crucial when dealing with regulatory requirements because you have maintained all data collected over a required period of time.
The software can also be used for forecasting and other analytics that depend on historical data and has the ability to develop baselines of data and dashboards to analyze over time.
Smart Industry: What capabilities does cloud-base deployment enable?
Steve: With the only Native Cloud service for a historian, GE Digital and AWS are significantly reducing the costs of deployment and maintenance, eliminating disruptions due to upgrades, and easily aggregating data across industrial plants for enterprise-wide optimization.
GE Aviation is using Proficy Historian on AWS and expects to reduce infrastructure costs by more than 20% and annual resources by $185K. The team will also improve system availability by eliminating more than a month of planned downtime and enabling a common data store accessible by thousands of enterprise-wide employees.
In addition, Proficy Historian in the Cloud can improve performance with high availability, increase agility with autoscaling, and enable enterprise optimization with OT data integrated into the cloud and available for cloud-based analytics.
Smart Industry: Who most benefits in terms of industries / verticals?
Steve: OT data is universal to industrial organizations. It is not limited to certain industrial segments. Regardless of the industry, IT wants to leverage their investments and strategies across the enterprise—and that includes using cloud for OT data. The question is no longer “Why? but “How?”
With a cloud-native operational data historian, getting OT data to the cloud is now greatly simplified and cost effective. For larger industrial organizations, this enables enterprise-wide analytics and optimization gains. For small- to mid-sized industrial organizations, this provides an easy, cost-effective on-ramp to the cloud.
