From Legacy Data Historians to a Modern, Open Industrial Data Stack

Coenraad Pretorius, founder and principal consultant at recultiv8, highlights the limitations of traditional data historian systems in industrial settings, which include complexity, high costs, and slow data insights due to proprietary and cumbersome architectures. These systems are often difficult to manage due to their reliance on multiple specialized components, leading to delayed decision-making and increased costs. In contrast, Pretorius advocates for a modern, open architecture using InfluxDB 3, open-source tools, and cloud analytics to enhance performance, security, and scalability. This approach separates responsibilities between edge systems for real-time data handling and cloud systems for historical analysis, resulting in faster dashboards, lower costs, and flexible data pipelines. By leveraging familiar tools like SQL and Python, this modern stack allows for quicker implementation and improved agility in industrial operations, as exemplified by significant cost savings in a case study.