Open Systems International
Solving Utilities Operational Challenges With Innovative Solutions

Open Systems International, Inc. (OSI) is an automation software company providing advanced monitoring, control, analysis and optimization of energy production, transport and distribution for electric utilities. OSI offers secure Smart Grid solutions which allow integration of renewable energy sources, and consumer integration into the power production and delivery process. They have become a leader in this automation space, rapidly gaining market share due to their superior technology. OSI is a privately held company that was founded in 1992 and is headquartered in Minneapolis MN, with offices in strategic international markets.

Competition, regulations, efficiency drives, cost pressures and Cyber Security concerns pose ongoing challenges for utilities worldwide. The Operations Technology (OT) systems have become the most critical cyber assets that a utility has, because these systems play the central role in a utility’s successful operation. The OT systems responsible for Automation have traditionally been based on proprietary technologies, rather than IT-centric solutions.These traditional systems have historically been complicated to implement, deploy and upgrade, leading to very high life cycle costs and maintenance manpower requirements.

With a new industry trend of integrating OT and IT, CIO’s and IT leadership have been challenged to align their automation systems with their enterprise IT standards and organization. The complexity of keeping these systems up-to-date has presented challenges for meeting the strict Cyber Security mandates for protection of the utility’s critical assets.

OSI’s software offers an IT-centric platform that is well aligned with corporate enterprise standards and easily integrates the Operational Automation platforms into the enterprise, addressing these traditional industry pain points. OSI has exceeded customer expectations by creating and maintaining solid partnerships throughout the life cycle of the project. The culture of architectural elegance, simplicity, innovation, security, reliability, user friendliness and openness is the company’s key design foundation.

Some of OSI’s key differentiators from its competitors include open architecture available on multiple operating systems, standard product-driven strategy which enables the users to easily keep up-todate with technology changes and product improvements; fast initial software deployments and subsequent upgrades; advanced Graphical User Interface based on Microsoft .NET technology; best customer satisfaction in the industry; best customer support; and lowest life cycle costs in the industry.

Prominent products include OSI’s monarch (Multi-platform, Open Network ARCHitecture) platform which provides Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, Energy Management Systems (EMS), Distribution Management Systems (DMS), Generation Management Systems (GMS), Outage Management Systems (OMS), Data Warehouse and Historian Systems and Energy Market Applications.

OSI has clients in all sectors of the utility industry, including large IOU’s, mid-sized Generation and Transmission cooperatives, small municipalities and government entities. OSI has nearly 400 customers across North America and strategic international markets (India-ME, Latin America, Asia- Pacific and Australia). They have been very successful in the electric utilities (Transmission, Generation, Distribution, and Renewables), large campus operations (Universities, large industrial installations, etc.), Cyber Security, wind energy and smart grid market segments.

OSI’s business and leadership stability enables the company to establish long-term strategies aimed at enhancing their technologies by offering the most IT-friendly automation platform in the industry. Their commitment to quality and customer satisfaction is best highlighted in the corporate message given by Bahman Hoveida, the company’s President and CEO: “In order to succeed as an enterprise, we must build a superior open, secure and elegant product based on the latest open technology, sell it at a reasonable cost, deliver it in a timely manner and stand behind our clients every step of the way.”