Industrial organizations collect vast amounts of time-series data from sensors, equipment, and sites around the clock. This continuous stream of operational information holds significant value, containing insights about past performance, current conditions, and future potential. With the advancements in automation, the challenge today isn’t generating data; it’s extracting meaningful insights from the millions of data points flowing through these systems daily.

This is why a robust data historian becomes your analytical foundation. Without it, you spend time wrestling with data access issues, hunting down missing measurements, and building custom scripts to combine multiple sources. That leaves little time for the analysis that drives improvements. Instead, a data historian specializes in collecting, storing, and providing access to time-series data, the sequential measurements that characterize industrial processes over time. Unlike traditional databases, historians are purpose-built for the relentless flow of sensor readings, equipment states, and process variables. So, the right historian transforms your data from a burden into a strategic asset.

Given this critical role in your data infrastructure, selecting the right platform becomes essential. Whether you’re implementing your first historian, outgrowing a SCADA-integrated system, or facing escalating costs from your current solution, the industrial data historian decision requires matching technical capabilities with your operational reality.

Defining Your Requirements

Before you start comparing features and pricing, take a step back and assess what your plant truly needs from a data historian. Every facility is different, and the right solution depends on the nature and scale of your operations. Start by asking your team: What’s the biggest pain we have with accessing or understanding our data today? Their answers will highlight where a historian can add the most value.

And to help identify areas of value, focus on these three key sections:

Data Volume and Frequency

Count your measurement points, not just what you’re collecting today but what you’ll need in the next three years. Are you looking at thousands of tags sampled every few seconds? Do you have edge devices requiring high-speed data collection? And will you need fleet-wide monitoring? Your requirements for tag count and data resolution will vary based on your industry and operational focus.

Questions to Get Started:

  • How many tags? And what is the breakdown between analog and digital tags?
  • What type of calculated (or virtual) tags exist now?
  • What data resolution does operations require?

Primary Use Cases by Role

Consider your primary use cases and prioritize them. Operations teams need reliable dashboards that update without delay. Maintenance personnel want quick access to historical data for root-cause troubleshooting. Process engineers need to compare last week’s operations against related time periods. Management wants monthly energy reports without taking up the site personnel’s limited resources. Discuss in depth these needs and define the necessary level of sophistication.

Easy Button: To create use cases, try using this format: As a [type of user], I want to [do something] so that [I get this outcome].

Existing Infrastructure Compatibility

Evaluate your current infrastructure. List your control systems, PLCs, and other data sources. The historian you choose should be able to connect to these systems through standard protocols, such as OPC UA, Modbus, or BACnet, without requiring expensive connectors or custom development. Look for solutions offering straightforward integration with clear implementation processes and reasonable resource requirements.

Pro Tip: Consider standardizing on a secure protocol during the implementation. But don’t worry, your historian should be able to support multiple protocols.

Core Capabilities That Matter

Beyond your specific requirements, your historian must deliver these essential capabilities:

Reliable Data Collection

Your historian must collect data consistently during normal operations. Network interruptions are inevitable, so look for local buffering that stores data when connections drop and forwards it automatically when communication resumes. For higher assurance levels, consider historian redundancy with primary and secondary servers.

Reliable collection goes hand-in-hand with secure collection. Security deserves attention upfront, not as an afterthought. Security features include:

  • Granular access controls: Different users need different data access levels
  • Data protection: Safeguard data both at rest and in transit
  • Single sign-on integration: Simplify user management across systems
  • One-way data flow: Receive data but never send commands back to operational systems

Growth-Ready Architecture

Plant expansions tend to happen gradually, then suddenly all at once. Your historian should handle increasing data volumes, additional measurement points, and new users without architectural overhauls. This includes technical capacity (processing power, storage, network throughput) and licensing models that don’t penalize growth with exponential cost increases.

Multi-site operations require special consideration. Can you aggregate data across locations while maintaining local access? Who needs access to different sites? Will your Seattle plant engineer need to compare data against the Memphis facility, or will management need fleet-wide visibility for benchmarking performance?

Plan for deployment flexibility, even if your current approach is on-premises. Your organization may never move to the cloud, but having the option provides valuable insurance. Choose solutions supporting multiple deployment models without forcing you to rebuild your entire data infrastructure.

Practical Data Access

Beyond data collection and archiving, historians provide visualization tools to turn raw data into meaningful information. These built-in tools should effectively serve the diverse needs of users. Operators need trending displays and alarm views. Engineers require detailed analytical capabilities, including logical functions, statistical analysis, and comparison tools. Management needs automated reports that arrive on schedule without manual intervention.

Historians should also provide practical methods for extracting data for third-party use. Methods include APIs, but that’s not all. Consider direct database connections, standard export formats, Excel integration, and connections to business intelligence platforms. Your data becomes more valuable when people can work with it using familiar tools.

Implementation Realities

Technical capabilities alone don’t guarantee success. Consider these practical factors:

True Cost Analysis

Software licensing represents just one component of total costs. Factor in implementation services, training requirements, ongoing support, hardware infrastructure, and system administration resources. Some solutions require specialized expertise for configuration and maintenance, while others offer more straightforward setup and operation.

More Information: Check out these recommendations for calculating the total cost of ownership.

User Adoption

Technical capability means nothing if your team doesn’t use the system. Users needing information at 5 PM won’t wait until the next day for a report to generate. Engineers won’t adopt tools requiring twenty clicks to perform routine analysis.

Partner with vendors to provide role-based training programs, rather than generic software overviews. Good documentation, tutorials, and responsive support accelerate adoption and reduce frustration during the first months.

Questions to Consider:

  • How steep is the learning curve?
  • Is training and documentation readily available?
  • What kind of support model does the vendor offer (e.g., a dedicated support team you can reliably communicate with)?

Future-Proofing Strategy

Industrial environments change constantly. New equipment, upgraded control systems, evolving regulations, and emerging analytical requirements all affect your data management needs. Your historian should adapt through flexible communication options, straightforward configuration changes, and regular software updates that add capabilities without breaking existing functionality.

Consider your analytical roadmap. You might start with basic trending and reporting, but energy optimization, predictive maintenance, and advanced process control initiatives often follow. Choose a platform that structures and stores data appropriately for these future applications rather than forcing costly migrations later.

Learn More: See how organizations use a plant health index to identify failures using historian data as the starting point.

Making the Decision

And don’t worry, you don’t have to decide this alone. Instead, involve stakeholders from operations, maintenance, engineering, and IT from the beginning. Each group brings different perspectives:

  • Operations: Focus on reliability and daily usability
  • Maintenance: Value troubleshooting capabilities and quick access to historical trends
  • Engineering: Want analytical depth and flexibility for process improvements
  • IT: Consider security, integration complexity, and long-term supportability

Create evaluation criteria tailored to your specific needs, rather than relying on generic feature comparisons. Choose vendors who understand industrial operations and provide ongoing support as your needs evolve.

Your data historian serves as the foundation for every data-driven operational improvement you’ll make. The right selection provides reliable access to operational information while supporting growth and evolving analytical needs. Focus on solutions that solve your current problems while offering flexibility for future initiatives. The historian you implement today will influence your operational capabilities for the next few years, so make this technology decision count.