Operational Visibility with Canary Historian
- GPA
- Aug 7
- 3 min read
This multi-billion-dollar, environmental services company requested better operational visibility of remote sites across the U.S. Without this operational visibility, this company did not have the capability to control quality and costs, as desired.
During project development, a centralized, data historian aggregating data from multiple facilities was conceived. This data could be securely stored as well as accessed at both remote and corporate locations. Again, the end goal was to improve data transparency and support long-term analytics and reporting.
As a Result
One of the requirements, was for a historian which could scale easily, scale quickly, and cost effectively. Thus, Canary Labs’ Canary Historian was installed. The ease of which allowed the initial site to collect the specified data and begin analysis earlier than expected, meeting and exceeding expectations.
Dashboard and KPIs
One of the key features of Canary Historian is ease of dashboard development. Templates can be quickly created and customized across the enterprise specific to the site requirements. GPA used this to deliver real-time visibility into PID tuning, equipment performance, and critical KPIs.
Dashboards were accessible to both technical and non-technical users and supported secure, remote monitoring across teams.
APIs and Data Collectors
Having the ability to utilize standard data collectors or quickly create APIs helping to ensure TTV (time-tovalue) is critical. In this case, this is precisely what happened. A data collector service from the existing control system to the Canary Historian was developed. GPA ensured the control and communication architecture was developed in a Purdue-compliant manner. In this manner, relevant process data could be accessible by local PCs rather than solely process control machines.
"Bad Actors"
Whenever data, be it operational or financial, is exposed outside the corporate network, cybersecurity is immediately considered. The client was responsible for network segregation and firewalls. However, GPA was also involved in the configuration and installation of the cybersecurity strategy. GPA ensured that all historian connections met strict security standards, including encrypted data transmission through TLS protocols, while maintaining reliable access for approved users.
Stakeholder Alignment
Pushing data to the corporate network and accessing are the responsibility of the Corporate IT staff. The GPA team worked with IT to secure data on the corporate network while managing access control of sensitive data. GPA worked directly with the IT team to ensure a complete end-to-end solution while following security best practices and meeting the company’s data governance and policy requirements.
In addition, to ensure easy adoption, existing corporate credentials (Microsoft SSO) were used access the historian, as well as utilizing group-based management, so only specific users can view data for specific sites.
However, development of OT Network data is (mostly) the responsibility of the Operational Technology department. It was identified this client lacked the resources to develop and employ the necessary technology stack to complete the desired initiative.
Having little prior experience and due to speed of realization, GPA was asked to provide recommendations for this stack. One of the requirements was for a historian which could scale easily, scale quickly, and cost effectively. Thus, Canary Labs’ Canary Historian was installed.
Conclusion
The TTV of this project met expectations due to quick decisions about the technology stack using well-developed OT best practices and relying on a partner who understands both current needs and future expansion strategies.
GPA is a Certified Canary Partner trusted to implement historian solutions that improve visibility, strengthen security, and support smarter operations.
