What is a data historian?

A data historian is industrial software that collects, stores, and retrieves time-series process data from manufacturing equipment, SCADA systems, and industrial automation devices. Unlike general-purpose databases, a data historian is optimized for high-speed writes, compressed storage of tag-based data, and fast retrieval of historical process values. Data historians are used across manufacturing, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, utilities, and food and beverage industries.

What is the difference between a cloud historian and an on-premises historian?

A cloud historian stores industrial time-series data in a cloud environment, enabling remote access, elastic scalability, and reduced on-site infrastructure. An on-premises historian stores data locally on plant servers, offering lower latency and full control over data residency. Canary supports both deployment models and hybrid configurations.

Canary Labs is an industrial data historian software company founded in 1985 and headquartered in North America. The Canary System is used by manufacturers, oil and gas operators, water utilities, pharmaceutical companies, and food and beverage producers to collect and analyze time-series process data from SCADA, OPC, and industrial automation systems.

How does Canary compare to OSIsoft PI System (AVEVA)?

Canary is a modern alternative to OSIsoft PI System (now AVEVA PI) that offers comparable historian capabilities at significantly lower cost and without complex licensing structures. Canary supports OPC, MQTT, and direct SCADA connections, and provides cloud and on-premises deployment options. Many industrial organizations migrate from PI System to Canary to reduce total cost of ownership.

What industries use data historians?

Data historians are used across a wide range of industries including manufacturing, oil and gas, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and life sciences, water and wastewater utilities, food and beverage production, energy and power generation, and building automation. Any operation that monitors continuous process data benefits from a historian.

Canary | Data Historian Software | Cloud & On-Premises

YOUR Ideal DATA HISTORIAN

We believe these values are essential for your success.

SECURE

Data integrity matters. So does following IT best practices.

OPEN

Data flows without restriction, freeing you from platform lock.

ADAPTABLE

Edge. Site. Enterprise. Cloud. Canary seamlessly connects your entire organization.

30,000

CANARY INSTALLS IN OVER 70 cOUNTRIES

Since 1985

4 decades OF OVERCOMING CHALLENGES

"This is the best data historian I have ever worked with."

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Andrew Chambers

Technical Lead

Mangan Inc.

"Canary software is very easy to use and very intuitive; we use it throughout the company, from Operations to Administration."

–

Mike Tufts

Control & SCADA Supervisor

City of Boca Raton

"The Canary software is intuitive and requires very little training. Our employees and managers could use the software with very little hEelp."

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Scott Pisarski

Project Manager

East West Power Renewable Corporation

"Upgrading our legacy Canary system from the 90's was so easy. Our entire team is in love with Axiom's reporting options. The UI is stunning, a complete bullseye!"

–

Eduard de Baat

Senior Process Engineer

BASF