The global site of the UK's leading magazine for automation, motion engineering and power transmission
19 March, 2024

LinkedIn
Twitter
Twitter link

UK industrial software giant Aveva buys OSIsoft for $5bn

25 August, 2020

The UK industrial software supplier Aveva is buying OSIsoft, the US-based real-time industrial data software and services developer, for $5bn. The two companies will combine their products, bringing together industrial software and data management to help customers accelerate their digital transformation. The merged business will have revenues of around £1.2bn.

Schneider Electric, which took a majority stake in Aveva in 2017, is said to support the acquisition, and will account for $2.1bn of a proposed $3.5bn rights issue to finance the deal.

Aveva says that OSIsoft’s data management software will complement its own end-to-end engineering, operations, and performance offerings. Integrating OSIsoft’s PI System into Aveva’s software will create an integrated data foundation that can drive big data, cloud and AI systems. The combination will also enable Aveva to diversify the industries it serves, as well as expanding its footprint in existing and new markets and geographies.

The merged operation – with a combined 93 years of experience – will be able to provide full-stack systems spanning edge, plant, and enterprise environments. Aveva adds that the transaction further validates its position in digitisation and IIoT.

The two companies’ product suites are open and interoperable, with many customers already using both. Aveva says the combined operation will offer broader, deeper scale and scope to lead the digital transformation of the industrial sector, driving greater efficiencies and sustainability for many industries, including consumer packaged goods (CPG), pharmaceuticals, water and wastewater, and utilities.

“Combining Aveva and OSIsoft is yet another significant milestone in our journey to achieving the ambitious growth goals that we have set,” says Aveva CEO, Craig Hayman. “This will not only help us serve existing customers better, but also open the flood gates to new opportunities which will accelerate the delivery of our digitisation vision.

“This agreement will enable our customers to improve business processes as well as eliminate inefficiencies,” he adds. “We are extremely proud to be moving into the next chapter with an even stronger solutions portfolio as well as an ever-increasing and robust customer base which continues to make us leaders in our sector.”

OSIsoft’s PI System is used to collect, normalise, store, and stream real-time, operational data to applications, analytics, AI and machine-learning platforms. It acts as a single system for recording operational data, and has been designed for cloud-enabled scale and data sharing across enterprises.

Aveva CEO, Craig Hayman: another significant milestone
Photo: BusinessWire

OSIsoft, whose revenues last year were $466m, says that its technology is used by two-thirds of industrial organisations in the Global Fortune 500, and by 1,000 of the world’s leading power and utilities companies, 38 of the top 40 oil and gas companies, all of the top 10 metals and mining companies, 37 out of 50 of the world's largest chemical and petrochemical companies, and 9 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies.

“Joining forces with Aveva enhances and extends our ability to deliver on our key commitments to our customers, partners and employees,” says OSIsoft’s founder and CEO, Dr Patrick Kennedy, who has led the business for more than 40 years. “Together we will be better able to service the largest digital transformation projects in history, including across industry 4.0+ and IIoT.”

Estudillo Holdings, a company majority owned by Dr Kennedy and his family, is the current co-owner of OSIsoft, along with the Japanese investment giant SoftBank, and Mitsui-owned MDT Holdings.

Aveva, headquartered in Cambridge, UK, has 4,400 employees at 80 locations in more than 40 countries. It has more than 16,000 customers worldwide, supported by an industrial software ecosystem that includes 4,200 partners and 5,700 developers.

The deal is expected to close around the end of 2020.

Between them, Aveva and OSIsoft already have many of the world's leading industrial businesses as customers
Source: Aveva



Magazine
  • To view a digital copy of the latest issue of Drives & Controls, click here.

    To visit the digital library of past issues, click here

    To subscribe to the magazine, click here

     

Poll

"Do you think that robots create or destroy jobs?"

Newsletter
Newsletter

Events

Most Read Articles