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OSIsoft Unveils New Web Portal for Corporate Performance Management

Posted on: Tuesday, 21 October 2003, 06:00 CDT

HOUSTON, ISA 2003, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- OSIsoft, the industry's leading Real-time Performance Management software company, today introduced OSIsoft RtPortal, the newest component of its RtPM platform. Based on Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003, RtPortal delivers actionable, real-time information to individuals throughout the enterprise so they can make better, faster business decisions.

RtPortal provides unification, personalization, role-based visualization and true team collaboration. RtPortal extends the company's RtPM offering, introduced by OSIsoft earlier this year, by providing Microsoft Office System users with a completely integrated, real-time portal experience. Information and visualizations, previously only available through OSIsoft's popular, thick-client products, are now available through RtPortal. RtPortal integrates with OSIsoft's RtBaseline (built around the company's flagship PI System) to penetrate legacy information silos and incorporate transaction data to provide a holistic, real-time view of a corporation's business activities. RtPortal closes decision support loops by allowing individuals to easily configure displays that track key performance indicators as they manifest. RtPortal empowers users by giving them the ability to quickly effect tactical and strategic decisions that impact the business in real-time.

Pat Kennedy, CEO and founder of OSIsoft, has set as one of the company's principal goals to re-engage the business users. This is accomplished by providing them a configurable (as opposed to programmable), real-time portal environment in which they can easily interact with current business processes, related documents and real-time information in a manner that facilitates identification and resolution of problems as they occur, not simply report them after they have already negatively impacted the business. This can only be accomplished by joining OSIsoft's unique, industry-proven, real-time technology with the new SharePoint Portal Server 2003 from Microsoft.

"The opportunity to profit from information is directly proportional to how fast one acts on that information," said Michael Saucier, OSIsoft's vice president of marketing. "RtPortal provides a compelling extension to Microsoft's standard, desktop-based information worker platform, which accelerates and improves an enterprise's ability to respond to changing manufacturing or market events. When combined with the enterprise-class RtPM platform, corporate transparency and critical information access are dramatically improved."

"OSIsoft's presence in operations gives the company a unique opportunity to quickly deliver Microsoft's portal vision to the manufacturing operations domain," said Don Richardson, director, manufacturing industry solutions at Microsoft. "OSIsoft's work with Microsoft builds on more than 10 years of collaboration to deliver real-time analytic and decision support to the industrial user. OSIsoft's strategic reliance on Microsoft as its sole development platform going forward allows it to better take advantage of our focus on innovation and the deep architectural features within our platform and enterprise-ready products."

The RtPM platform is a new concept introduced by OSIsoft at the beginning of 2003 that takes full advantage of OSIsoft's industry-leading PI System information architecture. OSIsoft's customers have been using the PI System family of products to affect performance improvements for more than 20 years. During this time, OSIsoft has steadily and reliably kept its customers in step with modern technology. Because platform changes are commonplace with an enduring software architecture like the PI System, OSIsoft customers have grown accustomed to seamless migration between hardware and software platforms. True to form, the upgrade to RtPortal and the transition to Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Office System within existing OSIsoft installations will be handled with minimal downtime, retaining all information collected in the past regardless of the customers' initial architecture.

"OSIsoft's RtPM solution has been a valuable tool for Calpine, allowing us to leverage real-time data to support business decisions throughout our organization," said Mark Brown, manager, Field Data Acquisition Engineering- Operations Engineering Services, Calpine Corporation. "Calpine recognizes the clear advantages of deploying portal technologies and has been leveraging portal collaboration for the past two years. Recently, Calpine initiated a pilot program with the goal of maximizing the value of our real-time operations data, as well as other related critical business data. We believe portal technologies such as RtPortal integrated with Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 offer Calpine the flexibility to support our fast-paced environment. By providing this data in a role-based and context sensitive approach, we can provide each user with the most pertinent information to support their responsibilities."

The RtPM platform products, including the PI System, are designed for fast deployment and easy integration with existing IT infrastructures. This allows corporations to leverage existing assets and systems for improved agility, productivity and profitability. With actionable, real-time information, RtPortal turns information workers into real-time information workers by leveraging the new features of OSIsoft RtPM platform and Microsoft Office System, including two products within Office System: SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Office Live Communication Server 2003.

Building on tools already familiar to Office users, the Microsoft Office System includes servers, services, programs and solutions to help users connect people and organizations to information, business processes and each other. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is the scalable portal server that connects people, teams and knowledge across business processes to facilitate better collaboration. Office Live Communications Server 2003 is an enterprise real-time communications server that provides an extensible platform to deliver presence capabilities and instant messaging to connect people, information and business processes so that employees can make better decisions faster.

About OSIsoft

OSIsoft is a leading provider of Real-time Performance Management (RtPM) software to large worldwide corporations in energy production, process and discrete manufacturing, utilities and network services. OSIsoft's products collect real-time data from multiple geographical and automation sources, transform data into actionable information, and distribute information through an enterprise-wide portal to decision makers anytime, anywhere in the corporation. OSIsoft's PI System, the flagship platform for real-time performance management, has been deployed at over 10,000 industrial customer sites in more than 80 countries for the continuous improvement of enterprise performance and bottom line profits. OSIsoft is headquartered in San Leandro, California with regional and international offices located worldwide. To learn more about OSIsoft and its products visit http://www.osisoft.com/ .

Product and company names herein may be the property of their respective owners.

For more information, please contact: Leslie Johnson of Schwartz Communications, Inc., +1-415-512-0770, osisoft@west.schwartz-pr.com , for OSIsoft.

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