AVEVA Completes $5 Billion OSIsoft Acquisition
The combination of AVEVA’s industrial performance applications with OSIsoft’s industrial data platform creates digital transformation opportunities for AVEVA’s distributor and systems integrator partners.
AVEVA, a leader in industrial performance applications, has completed its $5 billion acquisition of operational data platform developer OSIsoft in a move that gives AVEVA and its partners the capabilities to help industrial customers accelerate their digital transformation efforts.
The two companies announced the completion of the acquisition after receiving all the required regulatory approvals in the markets in which the companies do business. The two companies initially announced the acquisition agreement in August 2020.
“We can deliver in the industrial sector end-to-end customer value and we do that with our portfolio of solutions and best-of-breed software. Our real goal here is to accelerate digital transformation in the Industrial sector, which is one of the last industries to go through this digital transformation at scale,” said AVEVA CEO Craig Hayman (pictured) in a virtual press conference.
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AVEVA Group, headquartered in Cambridge, U.K., markets a range of industrial applications including plant operations and process manufacturing software and asset performance management applications. The company’s product portfolio includes the popular Wonderware line of SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) applications that AVEVA obtained following a series of acquisitions.
AVEVA’s products are used by more than 20,000 companies in manufacturing, chemical, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, consumer packaged goods, utility, and water and wastewater treatment industries.
OSIsoft, based in San Leandro, Calif., develops the PI System real-time industrial data platform that records data from process control systems. That data is used to manage industrial systems and analyzed to find ways to improve industrial processes.
“We‘ve always been very, very focused on the platform within an industrial space. And I think with AVEVA, we now expand those horizons,” said OSIsoft founder and chairman emeritus Dr. J. Patrick Kennedy during the press conference.
The acquisition officially closed Friday, March 19. AVEVA now has a market cap of $13.5 billion with annual revenue of $1.6 billion, Hayman said. IT and electrical equipment maker Schneider Electric retains a 60 percent stake in the company.
The combination of the two companies creates a leader in what executives called industrial “performance intelligence.”
Bringing the two companies’ technologies together will help customers optimize their industrial systems for operational agility, improve the reliability and safety of industrial systems and assets through increased automation, better support remote management of industrial processes, and drive operational efficiencies through operational data analysis and the use of AI and machine learning technologies, Hayman said.
Executives speaking at the virtual press conference hammered home the point that while customers will recognize immediate benefits from the combination of the AVEVA and OSIsoft software, the bigger picture includes the ability for industrial businesses to leverage them – and the data and analytical insights they provide – for their automation and digital transformation initiatives.
The two companies’ software has been integrated to allow data to flow from the AVEVA applications into the OSIsoft PI System, said Rob McGreevy, head of portfolio and software strategy at AVEVA. The newly combined company also plans to offer an integrated cloud solution, said McGreevy, who described the combination of the two companies’ products as “a phenomenal set of capabilities that sit atop [a] treasure trove of information.”
CEO Hayman said about one-third of AVEVA’s business is done through partners. The company’s partner base includes some 120 distributor sales partners, more than 3,500 global and regional systems integrators, and more than 250 technology partners.
AVEVA has been stepping up its channel initiatives recently, hiring former PTC channel chief Kerry Grimes in 2019 to lead its global partner program and launching a new partner program last year to offer its full software portfolio to its industrial distributor resellers.
Hayman noted that the combination of AVEVA and OSIsoft will create new opportunities for partners in industrial system performance optimization, automation and digital transformation. Partners that develop operational applications for vertical industries that work with AVEVA software can feed operational data into the OSIsoft system, creating partner opportunities around performance intelligence and predictive analytics reporting.
“We have already heard from our Partners and system integrators that they‘re super excited about working with OSIsoft,” the CEO said.