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President’s Welcome to 2018

    Welcome to the first edition of the OPC Connect newsletter in 2018. After taking a brief hiatus from this column I am back to tell you about all the exciting things the OPC Foundation is looking forward to this year. 2018 promises to be a very interesting year for the OPC technology, the overall OPC membership, and the community-at-large.

    Events

    There are a myriad of events that OPC is hosting, as well as taking part, in 2018 including training events, trade shows, and a multitude of industry events focused on the Industrial Internet of Things, Industrie 4.0, and other countries’ versions of the Industry 4.0 architecture. For more information about the exciting events the OPC Foundation is participating in, check out the OPC Foundation website event page. Link: https://opcfoundation.org/events/

    Collaborations

    As the dominant infrastructure and architecture on the market, OPC UA tackles multi-vendor, multi-platform, secure, reliable information integration interoperability from the sensor to the cloud. Most importantly the end-users, across many industries, are all demanding this information integration interoperability that OPC UA provides. Because of our unparalleled excellence in providing this service we have the pleasure of working directly with the Open Group, specifically Open Process Automation. The Open Process Automation Group is defining requirements in architecture for the process control industry primarily focused on the oil and gas vertical. They are looking for reliable interoperability that is truly multi-vendor and multi-platform and provides complete connectivity to the legacy systems of yesteryear and the future systems of tomorrow. You can learn more about all of our collaborations and partnerships on our website. Link: https://opcfoundation.org/markets-collaboration/

    Asia

    This past year the OPC Foundation opened up a new regional office in Korea. I will be traveling to Korea in March to participate in a multitude of trade shows throughout Korea. Also in 2017, we opened up a new certification lab in China. This lab is part of ITEI (Instrumentation Technology and Economy Institute) and is focused on certification of OPC products developed by China-based companies. I travelled to China in September 2017 to open up this new lab and to certify the new lab’s operation. We now have dedicated regional entities in Japan, China, and Korea focused on evangelizing OPC UA.

    Certification

    We will be having a Certification Corner article in every edition of the newsletter that we’ll use to talk about certification, our certification labs, and the OPC Foundation interoperability workshops. In January we completed our North American interoperability workshop hosted by Honeywell in Phoenix, Arizona. Over 20 companies participated in this exclusive member program to test their products with other companies. We will be doing other interoperability workshops throughout the coming months in Japan, Germany, and France.

    Marketing and Technical Control Boards

    We’re taking steps to really improve and increase participation and transparency in our technical and marketing initiatives inside the OPC Foundation. We have established a Marketing Control Board (MCB) to mirror the Technical Control Board (TCB) that truly drive the marketing and technical vision of the Foundation. The MCB and TCB groups, their members, mission, and charter will all be published transparently in the near future. By having an MCB and TCB, with both reporting to the Board of Directors, we can make sure that we are being proactive and developing the best technology that will be successfully adopted by our suppliers and end-users to solve the real-world problems of today and well into the future.

    Adoption

    At the OPC Foundation we strive to develop only the best specifications and partner with organizations that are truly committed to solving real-world problems and providing complete solutions. I’m frequently quoted that I measure success by the level of adoption and by that standard I feel strongly that this past year was a consummate success for the OPC Foundation. Furthermore, there are only good things to anticipate in the coming months of 2018 and we hope that you will keep coming back to hear about all the great things yet to come.

    We welcome your suggestions and feedback.  We are always looking for success stories and how end-users are using the OPC UA technology, and also learning what suppliers are doing with OPC UA. Please keep Stefan Hoppe and myself informed of the great innovations that are happening inside of your company.

    Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to read this edition of the OPC Connect newsletter.