Pat was a visionary and passionate leader. He was always thinking about the greater good. A bit of a story to illustrate:
 
When I went to demo the our new ProcessBook at the ISA show, I asked “How do you want me to tell the story regarding our future plans?”
Pat said: “Tell them all of it”. Sensing my confusion at his response he added:
“If a customer comes by – tell them why they need to buy it.”
“If a partner comes by – tell them why they need to help sell it.”
“If a competitor comes by – tell them everything we are doing.”

Pat added, “We are going to be one of the first supporting Microsoft in this market, we can’t go it alone, we need everyone on the show floor to think the way we are thinking.”

Leading by example and collaborating with customers, partners, and even sometimes competitors, was a hallmark of Pat.
 
On the personal side, Pat and Patty took a personal interest in my family’s cross-country move, making that transition possible when we relocated from Philadelphia to the Bay Area. We are forever greatful.

Like many, I consider Pat a industry leader, mentor, and friend. He will be missed by many. My deepest condolences go out to Patty, Jenny, Kathy, Mike, and the rest of the family.

During my tenure as an intern at OSIsoft, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Kennedy. It was one of my initial days at the organization, and being a novice, I felt somewhat apprehensive as I didn't know anyone there. Although I had heard about the CEO, I had never had the opportunity to meet him before. As I was about to push the 5th-floor button in the elevator, an older gentleman entered and smiled at me. He cordially welcomed me and inquired about the team I was joining. When I informed him that I would be working with Bifrost, he remarked that it was a great team and conveyed his greetings to Anthony. At the time, I didn't realize that I had the privilege of conversing with Dr. Kennedy, and I was ashamed that my nervousness prevented me from asking his name. When I shared my experience with Anthony, my manager, he informed me of the CEO's identity. Dr. Kennedy's passing is a loss to the organization and industry. His exceptional leadership qualities will always be remembered.

I met Pat many years ago while I was an account manager at Bailey Controls. I took Pat to Standard Oil HQ to promote his constraint control application running on Network 90. Over the years I continued to see Pat at various ISA shows but never thought I would end up working for him at Oil Systems in the early days. Pat was easy to approach to discuss industry trends and  his vision for the company. Pat ran the company like a family business with many talented people who were given the freedom to just do the right thing in order to make the company successful.

Pat was a master in outmarting the competition and when they said they will put him out of business, he just smiled and stayed focused on the core business goals.

My 20+ years of working for Pat were the best years of my career and I will cherish all of years I always looked forward to another day of promoting OSIsoft and the PI System.

Pat Kennedy literally made history during his life.

A nice person and a good family man. That sounds simple, but to me that is the most a man can strive. He hit that mark and started one of the most successful companies in history of which i was a small part. My time with him will always be part of my life. He will be remembered forever by the small group of early OSIsoft family. God Bless him. 

There is an African proverb that says that when an elder dies a library burns to the ground. I think that is apt for Pat, as he was so wise and willing to share a story or anecdote for every situation. Often about a customer, (whether a nuclear facility, a microgrid or wind farm), about technology or about family. Hopefully this site will be used to share some of Pat’s favorite stories.

I knew Pat mostly in the work context, and he was a wise mentor who was generous with his time offering encouragement and ideas. I relished the time that I spent with him over the last 15 years. As I reflect on some of the lessons he would consistently come back to, I have a few to highlight:

Care: Pat cared deeply about his family, his team, his customers and his community. Through and through. He always backed up the people who worked for him, and engendered substantial loyalty to him that way. And that loyalty applied not only to his employees, but also his customers. Pat was very early to the now-popular concept of a ‘User Conference’, where he gathered customers from all over the world to share their stories about using the OSIsoft PI system. His idea was that if you really cared about customers and provided value to them, the best thing to do is just get them talking to each other and sharing their success. His love of his wife, his kids and grandkids was also unequivocal and clear to those who interacted with him. More recently, Pat quietly showed substantial support for local community services organizations, without any interest in ostentation, acknowledgement or pomp.

Embrace Selling: Pat was always selling. Joyfully, unapologetically, convincingly selling. He only sold things that he believed in, but wasn’t shy about it. Whether selling the PI system data infrastructure, fiber capacity through Lit San Leandro, possible investments in start-ups, or tomatoes from his family farm. Most of the time, it was PI systems - software that tracks complex sets of datapoints over a time series. The software is the best in the world at what it does for its customers. And Pat was generally looking to sell PI systems that had ever increasing scopes. The PI software powers most of the US electric grid, and there were always visions and ideas of ever larger and more complex systems.

Stay Curious: Pat was always curious to learn more, in great technical detail. He wanted details about customer use cases, about new technologies for AI, power generation, food, communications, wireless sensors, etc. He was a voracious reader and brought the curiosity of a PhD student to most meetings. And sometimes followed those meetings up with academic-like papers. I was consistently energized and challenged by my meetings with Pat, often asking myself, ‘Well, why hadn’t I already asked that question’?

As I expect is the case for many of us, we will miss Pat dearly - miss his smile, miss his advice, miss his talks at User Conferences and miss his ambitions for the future of data infrastructure and the future scope of PI systems.

I have lots of further reflection and appreciation for him, but for this moment I am getting some consolation from thinking about his arrival at the pearly gates. I imagine Pat arriving to meet St Peter, with a big smile on his face. Peter congratulates him on a life well lived, and invites Pat to come on into heaven. I imagine Pat pausing, with a smile and a twinkle in his eye, asking, “St Peter, I hear that you are trying to track billions of complex assets across a time series - have you heard about the PI system? I could probably put an interesting proposal together for you.”

Pat was an intellectual giant, gave the industrial software community so much and generously shared his learnings and life. Let’s keep his stories circulating. We’ll miss him dearly.

Pat changed an industry and the lives of many. I feel honored to have known him and to work with him for many years.

Pat... Thank you for letting me be part of your OSIsoft family after my maternity leave to restart my career. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to me, and for the career guidance that you gave me. You sent me an email once apologizing for the late reply to my note because it went missing from your desk. You attached a picture of your messy desk as proof of why it was missing. :) I loved your sense of humor, your intelligence, and your warmth. You will be forever missed. Thank you again for the legacy you left behind.....

Dr. Kennedy made the lives of so many others better with his courage and hard work starting this company. What a wonderful legacy he has left. We won't forget him. Deepest condolences to his family and friends.

For me, Pat will be remembered for creating a great company with a culture that respected its employees. I feel honored to work in such a place.

Pat will be missed by everyone he had the chance to interact with him. I am forever grateful for him for bringing me in the OSIsoft family, for sharing my crazy vision about where the energy industry was headed, and for being a genuine and good person. Building a company is no easy task, and Pat built a force for change in the world, in addition to an amazing company. He will truly be forever missed.

Bye bye Pat!
I remember the first time I met you in Altenstadt in the kitchen of the blue house: that was my second week with OSIsoft in July 1997. We had breakfast with goat cheese....
You made me stay so long...
We have been all blessed in Europe to be able to share a part of your journey for a long time!

We will miss you but will remember many stories!

Thank you for all you did for all of us Mr. Patrick Kenned. Rest in peace. My deepest condolences to his family.

Pat was a force that shaped an industry.
When I hired in 1996, I was in San Leandro when Julie Z. stopped Pat to describe a feature a customer requested was out if scope and would cost.
Pat's reply was don't worry about the cost. If this makes for a better product, do it.
Deepest condolences to Patty, Jenny, Mike, Kathy and the whole family.

Pat, may God bless you and keep you. I first met Pat back in 1994 when he came to our office with a PI system for us to experiment with. This was so illustrative of Pat ... not only did he build a great company but he helped so many others who built apps on the tail of the PI system. He was always willing to help and most of these deals, at least in his early years, were done by handshake alone. Pat's word was as solid as can be. Pat was an industry pioneer and an icon that will not be forgotten.

My deepest condolences to his family. Big loss to the entire OSIsoft community. RIP

Thanks Pat for founding a great company and for your generosity through the years.

I'm shocked to learn of Pat passing. I first met Pat in 1984 when he was a consultant to Bailey Controls and I was the "customer" (he really worked for Bud Keyes - but I was the primary contact and signed off on the bills).  We worked pretty closely together in that era, traveling around the country, at first selling advanced controls to the refining industry, an later one of the earliest PI Systems.  A few years later I called Pat up and told him that I was coming to work for him and he said Okay. 

Pat was the most important mentor to me in my early career, and later I really enjoyed my time working with him at OSI. The early growth years there were amazing. I loved going to work in the morning, and as they say; "if you love what you do you never have to work a day in your life." Well, certainly for those years, work was a passion, not an ordeal, and Pat created the environment to make that so. I always considered Pat and I to be good friends, and my wife Noha and I tried to get together with Pat and Patty whenever we were in the Bay Area. 

I'm sure that others will describe the amazing things that Pat did in his professional career, but I'd just like to say goodby to a friend. I'm glad that I had a chance to know you and work with you. We will miss you. . .

Pat's been a legend from the get go. When I first joined OSIsoft, I heard the Pat lore: wearing the Support green neck tie at a conference, refilling printer paper himself, believing in hiring PhDs, being a flat org type of guy. So 3 months in, I pinged him "Hey Pat, Penny from 1st floor. Had some questions about Support for you." Next thing you know, he asks about getting lunch that day :) . Some lore was, well, lore (the green necktie was actually just handed to him), but other lore was 100% fact.
Great person, great instinct, and I'll forever remember how tickled he was to learn that "Ohio" sounds like "good morning" in Japanese. If he ever saw me in a meeting, regardless of who else was in the room, he'd pop in and shout OHIO with a big goofy grin. And who can forget Pat getting on stage at PI World and talking about those "pink hats" that his granddaughter knit.
Loving reading all these notes. Sending much love to the fam <3

Pat was indeed a giant in industry. But more than that, he was an ethical honest man who knew that his success required treating his customers, employees, and strangers with dignity. We all have memories of his never hidden (but never loud or public) personal decency. I enjoyed having him as a boss and friend. Pat was always demanding but also loyal.

As far as strangers, well there is at least ONE working-mom-waitress at a Baltimore Crabhouse who enjoyed Pat’s “No! Give her a bigger tip Steve. She’s working hard, good at her job and has a family too” (Sept 2009) … without ever knowing him or his Kansas-decency!!

Eternal Rest grant unto him Oh Lord &
Let Perpetual Light Shine Upon him!!

PS . I can only imagine the wry-smiled argumentative questions that God now encounters and enjoys Himself with Pat.

Most of us who worked with Pat over the years will remember his life and legacy as a true pioneer in the field of industrial software and data management, a man who founded a company, OSIsoft, that revolutionized the way industrial organizations use data to make decisions. He was old school, put the needs of his customers first and was driven by a deep curiosity about how to solve complex engineering problems, especially those related to the power grid and clean energy. He was passionate about providing engineers with easier access to better data to make decisions.

His contributions to the field of industrial data management were truly transformative, and his impact will be felt for many years to come. Someday Pat’s vision of a trillion-point system will be achieved and the world will be even more interesting as a result. 

Personally, I’ll remember Pat for being low key and humble, almost always wearing blue jeans and hiking boots, and often walking to the office from the house in San Leandro his family had lived in for decades. He was kind, easy-going and fun to be with. Building a software startup is really hard and Pat knew it. He often spent time with our team at Element and with me one-on-one, curious to learn what we were doing and trying to find opportunities to collaborate and help us out. 

Let’s honor his memory and celebrate his extraordinary life.

I was blessed with the most amazing opportunity to work side-by-side with Pat over the last few years. The process of selling OSISoft to Aveva/Schneider with the backdrop of a global pandemic had put us in dual seats across a zoom screen for the last few years. He was seated at his home office - the dinning room in front of a piano with a paper cat and an occasional roaming ginger cat. I felt virtually welcomed into his and Patty’s home, where he’d take a few moments to bring her their morning coffee as we were starting yet another work day in a multi-year process. He was adamant that he should find a new and safe home for his life’s work to continue and thrive - for the customers and employees to be protected - and he did at Aveva. Kathy was with us on all those zoom calls that continued all the way until his last weeks with us.

His decades of experience in industrial data provided me an invaluable perspective and an incomparable joy during our discussions. We had many stimulating exchanges, very few disagreements, and I was blessed with incredible lessons about what makes products and companies great. Most of all, I will always carry with me his sense of passion for solving large scale problems with a sense of humility. That was his superpower - his greatest gift which he loved sharing it with those wiling to learn.

Pat was an old-school kind of entrepreneur. The one who believed in building the right product instead of selling future dreams, in taking the long-term perspective over short term gains. An engineer’s engineer. Pat had lots of truths - tenets that guided him and OSISoft when choosing the right decision path forwards.

He believed that you have to collect all the data, because you will never know what question you’d want to ask. That was PI’s main design principle. It was also Pat’s way of operating. He would collect lots of data through questions and idea drafts. Those were followed by a swift and simple decision once he believed all the data was there. He used to call it “non-linearity”, Saying people would confuse his data collection phase with tacit agreement - when it was more of a Japanese “Hai".

Pat loved platforms but really disliked applications. He was passionate about staying neutral - not just agnostic, but truly neutral. Unbiased by hardware, equipment, nor applications. He insisted that one code base has to solve all problems for everyone. He was immensely proud in how all PI implementations were one and the same. How all of them provided value out of the box.

Pat was the most non-sales sales person I have ever met. He kept saying that scope leads to scale. He always wanted to increase scope - collect more data from more parts of the company. He showed that as scope grows so does value - value to the customer. He kept saying you can only charge people 10% of the value he generated for them. It was closer to 1% in reality when we checked it.

He was proud and happy when his customers were happy. He didn’t measure or maximize profits. He measured customer satisfaction. He was most proud in how OSISoft had the highest historic net promoters score (NPS) in the software industry. He loved going to customer conferences and industry meetings. It allowed him to hear how customers talk about what they did with PI. He also thought that customers were his best sales people. He was right about all that.

Pat saw his role in our world as a problem solver and pathfinder for customers who put their faith in him. He could see connections that others wouldn’t understand even after he pointed them out. He kept things simple, which made his truths always sharp and correct. He had these fundamentals for four decades - starting from his first customers. He was totally proud that those first customers were all still customers 40 years later.

Pat loved the electric power grid. He knew everything there was to know about the grid. His favorite stories were of historic blackouts - and the software problem that caused them. It is no coincidence that PI became the nervous system for the power grid - sending the data that monitored and secured the electrons continue to flow. Pi was the third flow. That was one of Pat’s greatest achievements - his PI system is the only one that could monitor the largest machine ever built by mankind. He had great ideas for the future design of the global power grid. Where others want to build smart grids, Pat knew that the grid can only reinvent itself as a stupid-grid with smart platforms by its side. He left us these ideas for us to complete.

Pat believed in people and built OSISoft as one big family. He started engineers in customer success roles - making sure engineers focused on customer needs from day one, a focus that stayed with them for the rest of their journey. He believed that when customers call, their problem should be solved immediately, not logged for someone else to solve. He believed that engineers who listen to customers end up building the right products. He was proven right.

Pat hated presentations. He would say that one can put anything in bullets and make everyone interpret those differently. He wrote long detailed memos and emails. I did too. Pat would rewrite my memos from top to bottom - picking some points, to highlight his ideas. At first, I thought he disliked my text, then I learned that was his way of giving me the best compliment. I was his sparring partner. Even Ali needed someone to keep him sharp at the ring - and Pat was a the industrial data champion who allowed me into the practice ring with him. He kept sharp till our last sparring round. I will truly miss our “practice rounds", having tens of texts that now remain open discussions. The texts, much like we, are missing his voice to be completed now.

They don’t make many CEOs or people like Pat these days. We’ve all been blessed with sharing a part of his journey as brief or long as we did. He will be dearly missed.

I remember when I first met Pat. My first time in another country, my English was way far from being perfect or understandable, just got hired by OSIsoft and was asked to go to San Leandro, to start my training in the best company in the world. We were on the middle of the session, and he went to have lunch together with the new hires. I found it cool as a few CEOs and/or company owners actually spend some time talking to their new employees, and spending quality time bonding with them.

I ran into Pat a couple times, and he was very warm and welcoming whenever someone of his company approached him to say hi or to take a picture with him. He always had this Grandfather attitude towards younger employees.

I also remember these Pat Kennedy bubblehead awards (I wished I got my hands in one of them, would have been a great thing to have around to remember him).

I'm quite sad to learn that Pat has passed away in such tragic conditions, he clearly didn't deserve that. My deepest and most respectful condolences to his family and closer friends. I'll miss him too.