Importance of OPC UA Technology for DPP and Other Cloud Use Cases
The industry recognizes the significance of OPC UA information models not only for shopfloor connectivity but also for information models in IT use cases. While data is indeed the new currency, OPC UA goes beyond being just a protocol. It is a comprehensive framework for secure, reliable, and interoperable information exchange – from the OT world to the enterprise/cloud – also addressing IT topics, like the DPP, digital twins, and others.
Hannover Messe has always been an excellent place for exchange between commercial companies and the OPC Foundation, but also between different associations and consortia. The coming together of persons driving standardization, across many different sectors, providing an opportunity for both personal but quick exchanges with us, is one of the reasons why the trade show is so important to the OPC Foundation.
OPC Foundation Conference: Cloud Initiative
During this event, end-users came together with cloud and industrial vendors to get updates on the latest activities. In the third year of the conference, the OPC Foundation, supported by key players in this field, provided more details about the Cloud Initiative, especially the created Reference Architecture which was announced during the OPC Foundation press conference on the previous day.
Statements and presentations of the realization of this reference architecture with their offerings were provided by cloud vendors participating in the creation of the architecture.
OPC Foundation Conference: Field Initiative
At this event, the OPC Foundation was showcasing the latest developments in OPC UA FX. It extends OPC UA to the field level, integrating seamlessly with TSN, 5G, and APL to enable secure, real-time industrial communication. The conference featured strategic insights from OPC Foundation President Stefan Hoppe, technical updates from Peter Lutz, and compelling use cases from Schneider Electric. Experts from B&R Automation, Unified Automation, Matrikon, and BE.services demonstrated how OPC UA FX supports deterministic Controller-to-Controller communication and simplifies system integration.
Missed the event? You can watch the full conference recordings on YouTube: Click here to view
Key Activities at the OPC Foundation Booth
Visitors to the interactive booth, staffed with experts from industry and officials of the OPC Foundation, were able to explore various live demonstrations:
- Brownfield Integration: With several real-world products available, off the shelf, including an OPC UA interface, this demonstrator, and several partners, showed how to bring legacy devices to modern systems.
- Security Management: A live demonstrator to showcase the certificate management with OPC UA for OPC UA applications and devices but also legacy protocols.
- Ethernet-APL: A live demonstrator featuring APL-enabled devices, bringing OPC UA into field devices, bringing the data seamlessly to the cloud with OPC UA over MQTT.
- OPC UA for Field eXchange: A live demonstrator featuring prototype implementations of the OPC UA FX specifications from 27+ vendors. This live demonstrator showcases the benefits of the horizontal Controller-to-Controller (C2C) communication.
- OPC UA for Cloud eXchange: A live demonstrator, featuring 37 live devices and applications, publishing OPC UA messages over MQTT directly to a central broker, providing data to aws and Microsoft Azure dashboards as well as an application from Inchstone, as an application example.
With those impressions from the OPC Foundation booth, including all those real-world products highlighting the adoption and further commitment from major automation suppliers to the technology, the OPC Foundation attests that the exhibition is a great place for discussions and getting to know the technology.