HighByte Co-Founder and CEO Tony Paine

HighByte, a Portland-based software startup, last week reached a milestone when it released its first product—software that seeks to address the next-generation data architecture needs of industrial companies.

The company calls its software HighByte Intelligence Hub Version 1.0 and claims it’s “the first DataOps solution purpose-built for industrial environments,” according to a news release.

DataOps is a new category of software for industrial companies that are adopting “Industry 4.0” practices, according to the company. It allows manufacturing companies to aggregate data from “smart” machinery on the plant floor, make it available in real-time and convert it into useful information that employees can act on—like predicting machine failure, preventing downtime, and improving product quality.

“As the number of applications that need to turn raw data into usable information increases, the customer is faced with having to recreate models in every application or develop their own solutions that integrate with the various APIs,” Co-Founder and CEO Tony Paine said in a statement. “Either choice slows down the initial deployment of Industrial 4.0 initiatives, inhibits the ability to scale, and places a huge maintainability problem on the customer. With HighByte Intelligence Hub, customers can standardize and maintain their data models in a single location, securely streamline information flows, and accelerate time to value for their Industry 4.0 investments.”

HighByte previously launched a global beta program in September 2019 that involved 40 manufacturers, distributors, and system integrators from around the world.

“Data conditioning is critical for the execution of Industry 4.0 at scale,” Matthew Littlefield, president of LNS Research, said in a statement. “As the number of consumers of industrial data continues to increase, we see data modeling moving into its own abstraction layer in the technology stack. Solutions like HighByte Intelligence Hub are well positioned to capture data in motion and address the data interoperability issues faced by manufacturers.”

Paine, along with his co-founders Torey Penrod-Cambra and John Harrington, are all veterans of Kepware Technologies, another industrial software company in Portland that was acquired in 2016 for $100 million.