For Immediate Release
OPC Foundation and W3C Sign Memorandum of Understanding at Hannover Fair
OPC Foundation and W3C agree to cooperate together to ensure interoperability for IOT
Hannover, Germany – April 26, 2016 – At the Hannover Fair, Thomas J. Burke, President and Executive Director of the OPC Foundation and Dave Raggett, W3C lead for the Web of Things signed a Memorandum of Understanding in which both organizations agree to closely cooperate to ensure interoperability for the Internet of Things (IoT).
OPC and W3C have mutual goals, requirements and use cases developing an infrastructure to promote and facilitate across domain applications for open markets for horizontal integration along the value chain and supply chain, and vertical integration from manufacturing cells to enterprise management systems. These integration opportunities are the infrastructure necessary for IoT.
This unique collaboration between the OPC Foundation and W3C provides a complete solution as the essence of IoT connectivity horizontally and vertically across a multitude of domains. The collaboration provides the infrastructure for the Industrie 4.0 reference architecture facilitating the vision and execution of a “Smart Factory”.
Based on this motivation, OPC and W3C will collaborate with a strong focus on semantic interoperability. Both organizations will share requirements and use cases for consideration in their joint work. The primary goal of this collaboration is to establish a common framework for semantic interoperability and secure services across platforms, that have broad applicability beyond digital automation. This collaboration will provide the underpinning necessary to achieve seamless interoperability in the IoT.
The OPC Foundation and W3C collaboration will result in the development of specifications, white papers, guidelines and processes that provide the infrastructure necessary for the two organizations to promote system wide interoperability as the foundation of IoT. Deliverables from the collaboration between the two organizations will benefit the members of both of the respective organizations in the pursuit of developing and achieving information integration across a multitude of domains. IoT is an exciting opportunity for connectivity and information integration across disparate systems and disparate domains; the collaboration between the OPC Foundation and W3C clearly provides the solution for the IoT.
“Industrie 4.0 integrates IIoT, IoT, and M2M as part of the reference architecture for the Smart Factory”, says Stefan Hoppe, OPC Foundation Global vice president. “The collaboration between the OPC Foundation and W3C provides the solution for semantic interoperability for connected devices across the IoT spectrum, accurately realizing the vision of Industrie 4.0.”
“There is huge potential for digital automation, but this is being held back by a lack of interoperability across different IoT platforms”, said Dr. Dave Raggett, W3C lead for the Web of Things. “The collaboration with the OPC Foundation will help W3C in its efforts to develop inter-platform Web technology standards on semantic interoperability and end to end security.”
“The OPC Foundation collaboration with W3C provides the infrastructure and solid foundation to achieve semantic interoperability for IoT with increased market opportunities” says Thomas J. Burke. “OPC UA already leverages and references W3C standards as the key underpinnings for the service oriented architecture of UA, and the partnership will foster even better utilization of the W3C standards as the two organizations seamlessly work together to be the solution for the IoT”.
The OPC Foundation is a nonprofit international standards organization dedicated to providing the best specifications, technology, certification and process to achieve multivendor, multiplatform, secure reliable interoperability for moving data and information from the embedded world to the enterprise, inclusive of big data and cloud functionality. The OPC Foundation has developed the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) as the infrastructure and solution for the Internet of Things and is domain independent.
The W3C mission is to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure the long-term growth of the Web. The social value of the Web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C’s primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.
Media Contacts:
Stefan Hoppe
Vice President OPC Foundation
Stefan.Hoppe@opcfoundation.org
Dr. Dave Raggett
W3C lead for the Web of Things
dsr@w3.org
