AVEVA Historian Formerly Wonderware vs OSIsoft PI System, from AVEVA

Paired with Citect SCADA or System Platform, this is an excellent process historian. It also works well collecting OPC data. For basic data storage, retrieval, and analysis, this is well suited. This is not well suited for very large deployments. Multiple instances would need to be used to scale up, and the data fed into a second-tier/enterprise historian for corporate user consumption.

If you have many different DCSs or PLCs in your manufacturing plant, OSIsoft PI System does the job quite well to integrate all different types of sources and data. We have Yokogawa, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, and Azbil DCS and PLC. Connecting them is not a problem.

• Data storage--multiple data sources stream data in real time; it is stored without issue
• Data retrieval--small to moderate queries and trends are generally fast and efficient
• Cost effectiveness--it is one of the cheaper (non-enterprise) historian offers and therefore is good value for money (with a reduced feature set)

• Ability to integrate with many 3rd-party systems, 70 sources as per their marketing claims
• Great for big data management

• Query performance--for very long-term/large queries; the latest version which we are yet to commission has some improvements in this area
• User interface--the trend, query, and Excel add-ins are basic and could do with a refresh; web-based clients are a paid add-on and less full featured, so not a true replacement
• Connectivity--Wonderware System Platform driver packs are required for additional data source types, where native connectors are not provided by other products

• Missing some features and has some bugs

Good local support. The only issue is that there are not many system integrators that are well versed with OSIsoft. The implementation is also very costly.

AVEVA Historian, formerly Wonderware, was the best of the process tier historians in terms of reliability and functionality. It is still under development and not a "dead" product. It is also more cost effective than the more full-featured enterprise historians, such as PI, which our organization is not yet ready for. The feature set is at the right cost level, coupled with current support, were the key factors in the decision.

• Increased efficiency, reduction in labour for preparing reports--data is available to be queried and reported with less effort
• Increased production efficiency--near real-time data availability and comparisons to historical data has been used to make faster and better operational decisions
• Increased reliability--data has been used for maintenance optimization and planning purposes

• Real-time data
• We don't require constant updates during crisis from a technician who usually will update to BCP team via WhatsApp.