Market Segmentation

Most everyone buys a PI database because they have a plant or laboratory. Owning neither a plant nor a laboratory, I bought a PI database in 2003 to understand the database innards, but I digress.

PI’s significant strength is the ability to capture high-frequency data real-time from a variety of data sources and archive the data with high fidelity. Few other databases in the world are able to do as such, leaving OSIsoft with more than 14,000 deployments of PI and a strongest position in the data historian market.

100% of PI customers use the PI Archive.

In the early part of this century, OSIsoft created the PI ModuleDB, realizing that many input/output signals (I/Os) are related. These I/Os are related, most typically by unit (chemical engineering lingo). Units could be bioreactors, turbines, distillation columns, stacks, blowers, furnaces, centrifuges… pieces of equipment that perform a specific role in the process.

Attending a PI Regional Seminar in Southern California hosted by Norma Tan, a quick show of hands indicated that:

50% of PI customers use the PI Module Database.

Both these components are included with the standard PI Enterprise Server offering.

Also in chemical engineering, we learn that processes are continuous, semi-batch, or batch. In the world of batch, scientists and engineers are interested in time-windows… the time segments in which their units were operating (e.g. brewing, cleaning, sterilizing…).

5% of PI customers use the PI Batch Database.

Batch customers are typically in the life sciences market and this component is offered with the PI Enterprise Server Professional edition.

ZOOMS was designed to service all three market segments, and we are thinking along the lines of splitting the features into at least two editions to match the market segments.