The OPC Foundation Board of Directors has been expanded to include Amazon Web Services,
Google Cloud and Huawei, reflecting the growing role of OPC UA in IT and Industrial Cloud.
Scottsdale, AZ – March 11th, 2025 – The OPC Foundation announces the election of three additional new members to its Board of Directors including Steve Blackwell, Head of Manufacturing CoE for AWS, Praveen Rao, Global Director, Head of Manufacturing Industry for Google Cloud, and Dr. Jingyi Hu, Chief Strategy Officer of Industrial Digitalization of Huawei. Additionally, Shinji Oda from Yokogawa has been named as the Board’s newly elected Chairman.
Oda has succeeded Dr. Holger Kenn, of Microsoft, as Chairman. Oda has extensive experience within both technical and standardization realms, focusing primarily on the process industry during his decades of cooperation within Yokogawa.
The significance of OPC UA, within each cloud vendor’s structure, has developed to become a core and critical enabler for manufacturing and process solution delivery within these companies. By appointing Christoph Berlin, Vice President of Engineering, to the OPC Foundation Board of Directors, Microsoft has led the way as the first IT company to elevate OPC UA from the “technology of choice” for solution teams, to the highest levels of management decision-making.
Shinji Oda, Yokogawa says: “We welcome Christoph Berlin as the successor to Dr. Holger Kenn on the Board of Directors of the OPC Foundation. A big thank you to Dr. Kenn for his contribution to the OPC Foundation. I am deeply honored by the trust and confidence the Board members have placed in me, and I intend to faithfully fulfill my new role to meet their expectations. Yokogawa has been significantly involved in the development of OPC technology since the OPC Foundation’s inception and has supported its growth. As the convergence of OT and IT creates new value, I am delighted to play a role at a time when OPC UA is seen as a key technology for realizing Smart Manufacturing, from the field to the cloud.”
New board members of the OPC Foundation include AWS, Google Cloud, and Huawei, each being part of the “Who’s Who” of prominent companies from the industrial cloud sector. They are all aligned on a common goal to cement OPC UA’s position as the leading standard for open and secure data interoperability in Industrial IoT and Industrie 4.0. Each of these market leaders have the expertise and market influence to make this shared vision a global reality.
When asked what role OPC UA will play in modern industrial systems, the new board members stated:
Steve Blackwell, Head of Manufacturing CoE, AWS said: “The future of manufacturing is being shaped by AI’s ability to turn data into actionable insights and drive operational efficiencies. However, this potential can only be fully realized when data is accessible and interoperable across the entire manufacturing ecosystem. Open standards like OPC UA help provide the necessary foundation for seamlessly integrating manufacturing data into cloud environments, enhancing productivity, and accelerating the digital transformation across the manufacturing sector.”
Huawei’s representative Dr. Jingyi Hu, Huawei says: “Chinese industry is booming, and OPC UA is the cornerstone of Chinese industrial digitalization. We believe there are four megatrends of industrial digitalization, they are digitalization of industrial equipment, fully connected industrial networks, conversion to cloud-based industrial software, and value realization of industrial data. Huawei is both an enabler and an active practitioner of industrial digitalization, we will focus on ICT Infrastructure, to collaborate with OPC partners, we will jointly build the industrial intelligent twins, and promote the “New Four Modernizations” of industry.”
Praveen Rao, Global Director, Head of Manufacturing Industry for Google Cloud, said “Open, interoperable standards like OPC UA are crucial for enabling digital transformation in industrial settings. This collaboration will help empower businesses to harness the power of the cloud and unlock new levels of efficiency and innovation.”
Stefan Hoppe, President OPC Foundation said: “My sincere congratulations go to Shinji Oda, as he is the first representative of an Asian company in the role of Chairman of the Board of Directors. OPC UA also has great international relevance in China, with Huawei being the first Chinese company to join the Board of Director in actively supporting OPC UA in its diverse product portfolio including cloud solutions. Our users are delighted that, with AWS and Google Cloud also on the board, all major cloud providers now jointly support the pre-competitive standardization of the OPC Foundation, as there is no other organization in the world that brings together key companies of both OT and IT domains to meet the challenges of digitalization.”
Take a look at the CV and photo of the three new members here:
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 providing the best specifications, technology, process and certification to achieve multivendor, multiplatform, secure, reliable interoperability for moving data and information from the embedded world to the enterprise cloud. The Foundation serves over 1010 members worldwide in Industrial Automation, IT, IoT, IIoT, M2M, Industrie 4.0, Building Automation, machine tools, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, and Smart Energy sectors.
For more information about the OPC Foundation, please visit http://www.opcfoundation.org .
For more information, contact:
Stefan Hoppe
OPC Foundation
Stefan.Hoppe@opcfoundation.org
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