Industrial automation and control behemoth Yokogawa Electric
has acquired Phoenix, AZ headquartered data service provider Industrial
Evolution. The deal is said to strengthen Yokogawa’s ‘internet of
things’ based business and is the first acquisition carried out under
Yokogawa’s Transformation 2017 business plan.
Industrial Evolution collects and manages real-time process data from
devices and systems for a wide range of industry verticals including
onshore and offshore oil and gas production facilities.
In oil and gas, Industrial Evolution’s WellShare application facilitates data sharing between entitled joint venture partners, for example between Hess and Anadarko (OITJ May 2014) from its Gulf of Mexico data hub. Industrial Evolution’s data as a service is used by ‘all 10 of the largest US, Canadian and European oil and gas companies.’ Last year Industrial Evolution also released DrillDataNow, a link from rig-based Witsml data feeds into its hosted OSIsoft PI System historian.
As WellShare is closely tied to OSIsoft’s PI System we were curious to know if this was likely to change, since Yokogawa has its own historian, Exaquantum. Industrial Evolution CEO Simon Wright told Oil IT Journal, ‘Our cloud solution is built on a PI/SQL infrastructure which connects to a range of industry data sources from stand-alone devices through scada systems to historians. OSIsoft is the most successful supplier of historians as is reflected by our customer base. Yokogawa does not position Exaquantum as a competitor to PI and we have no plans to migrate to Exaquantum. We remain good friends of OSIsoft, one of our former owners. We have agreed a long-term extension of our right to build data services on top of PI.’
Unveiling its Transformation 2017 program last year, Yokogawa president and CEO Takashi Nishijima announced 4 billion Yen ($34 million) of ‘quick strategic investments’ designed to expand outside of Japan and extend its advanced solution business including software and product development in target industries such as oil and gas. The transformation involves a process of co-innovation across all of Yokogawa’s units to address optimization of materials and information flows within and between client companies. Yokogawa also has alliances with Cisco, Microsoft and McAfee. The acquisition was carried out through the Yokogawa Venture Group, a wholly owned subsidiary that was recently established for the purpose of executing transformational mergers and acquisitions. Yokogawa celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2015. More from Yokogawa.
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