OPC Announces “OPC UA Open Shared Source” Strategy
OPC Foundation opens the doors to facilitate increased adoption of OPC Unified Architecture technology beyond industrial automation!
For Immediate Release
Hannover, Germany – April 14, 2015 – The OPC Foundation announced that the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) specifications and technology will be made available to companies, consortia, and end users without requiring membership in the OPC Foundation. The OPC Foundation is implementing an “open shared source” strategy to facilitate widespread adoption of the technology beyond industrial automation.
OPC UA provides a solid connection and communication infrastructure for moving data / information from the embedded world to the enterprise. OPC UA provides a service oriented architecture (SOA) for multi-vendor multi-platform secure reliable interoperability.
In addition, OPC UA provides a complete solution for information modelling allowing consortia and vendors to plug in their simple or complex information models directly into OPC UA and take advantage of all of the OPC UA SOA allowing generic devices and applications to seamlessly share information.
Information integration and working with other consortia in domains outside of industrial automation requires different strategies for adoption of industry standards inclusive of making the specifications and technology open and easily accessible. Domains outside of industrial automation leverage open source strategies and open community development.
The OPC Foundation open shared source strategy provides developers a quick jump start on the technology enabling prototyping projects without any barriers.
The OPC Foundation vision of interoperability providing the best specifications, technology, certification and process is the core of this open shared source strategy for the technology and specifications. The open shared source will be hosted on open source collaboration community work space. The OPC Foundation OPC UA stacks available to the OPC Foundation members will be under RCL license, allowing OPC Foundation members to build the highest quality OPC UA enabled products and then be able to certify the products through the comprehensive OPC Foundation certification and interoperability programs.
Stefan Hoppe, OPC Foundation Vice President, commented that “Adoption of OPC standards in industrial automation and specifically reaching out to other domains requires new ways of thinking to evangelize and increase awareness about the OPC Technology”. “OPC Unified Architecture is becoming the dominant infrastructure and information modelling architecture for the Internet of things and industry 4.0, and these initiatives require complete transparency and open this about the technology to be a core part of their infrastructure.”
Thomas Burke, OPC Foundation President & Executive Director says, “OPC Foundation vision of collaboration working with other consortia to develop OPC UA companion specifications for their information models requires a strategy of opening the doors to the OPC Foundation and providing the specifications and technology with a license that increases awareness and evangelism”. Burke added, “OPC Foundation members benefit from the licensing structure that allows them to build quality interoperable OPC Products and then to certify their products using the OPC Foundation certification program.”
The OPC Foundation tool kit vendors approve the open shared source strategy as a mechanism to increase awareness of the OPC Unified Architecture technology. OPC Foundation tool kit vendors provide a complete infrastructure for product-level development inclusive of product-level support, maintenance, education and training programs. Companies building products based on products from the tool kit vendors have a solid foundation for their respective products to be certified by the OPC Foundation certification program.
The OPC Foundation Board of Directors are very supportive of this new “open shared source” strategy to really rock the world to have the OPC UA technology be the complete infrastructure solution for multi-vendor interoperability and information integration between industrial automation and numerous other domains.
The OPC Foundation Board of Directors includes:
• Thomas Burke, President and Executive Director of the OPC Foundation;
• Matthias Damm, President of Ascolab;
• Stefan Hoppe, BECKHOFF Automation (Vice President of the OPC Foundation);
• Ziad Kaakani, leads the System Engineering and Architecture organization for Honeywell Process Solutions;
• Russ Agrusa, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ICONICS;
• Veronika Schmid-Lutz, Chief Product Owner for Manufacturing at SAP;
• Thomas Hahn, Chief Software Expert at Siemens AG;
• Nobuaki Konishi, Vice President of Industrial Automation Systems Business Division at Yokogawa Electric Corporation.
About The OPC Foundation
Since 1996, the OPC Foundation has facilitated the development and adoption of the OPC information exchange standards. As both advocate and custodian of these specifications, the Foundation’s mission is to help industry vendors, end-users, and software developers maintain interoperability in their manufacturing and automation assets. The OPC Foundation is dedicated to providing the best specifications, technology, process and certification to achieve multi-vendor, multi-platform, secure, reliable interoperability in industrial automation and related domains. The organization serves over 440 members worldwide in the Industrial Automation, IT, IoT, Building Automation, Oil & Gas and Smart Energy sectors. For more information about the OPC Foundation, please visit https://opcfoundation.org.
For more information, contact:
Thomas J. Burke, President
OPC Foundation
330-357-8012
Thomas.burke@opcfoundation.org
