RIP Pat Kennedy

Dr. J. Patrick Kennedy, founder of OSIsoft, died in early April at the age of 79. He will be missed.

Who was Dr. Kennedy, or Pat as most people knew him? And why am I writing about him here?

Pat was a brilliant engineer, a savvy entrepreneur and a genuinely caring person. He was one of a kind.

He founded the company Oil Systems, Inc. which later became OSIsoft, and pioneered the technology that is known as “the PI system” that is used by so many large companies across the world. PI may have stood for “Process Information” at one point. The PI system also happens to be what I’ve based my career around.

PI started out as a historian, a set of programs that recorded pressures and temperatures and other measurements from oil refineries and factories and mines and so many other things (including trains). It started out on the DEC VAX and moved to Windows NT 3.51 and Unix and now runs on Windows and “in the cloud” and integrates well with pretty much every significant software system on the planet.

It’s great technology and I work with it every day. Pat started it and helped make it successful.

OSIsoft hosted annual user conferences, usually in San Francisco across the Bay from their offices in San Leandro, California. I was able to attend several in SF as well as one in Monterey, and a few European conferences as well. They were fantastic conferences, and one of the kickoff speeches was delivered by Pat, where he would offer his insights into the industry and where he saw it going. You could tell that Pat was a smart man.

OSIsoft has been a very technical company. They had excellent technical support, 24/7/365. Their software did what it was supposed to, without being bloated, and PI connects with everything.

I am writing about OSIsoft in the past tense because it was acquired by AVEVA a couple of years ago. Almost all of OSIsoft’s identity has been replaced by AVEVA’s.

I have never worked for OSIsoft and I might have exchanged a dozen words with Pat over the years, but I have worked with his software and company since 1998 and you pick things up. Pat was well liked by his customers and by his employees.

Pat eventually stepped back from the day to day operation of the company, probably recognizing that OSIsoft had grown too large for the informal structure it started with. He continued to be active with the company, both in front of the crowd giving talks and behind the scenes.

I will miss Pat at conferences and I know many, many people will as well. My condolences to Pat’s family and the vast extended family of employees and customers that he affected in such a positive way.