The OPC Foundation successfully showcased the latest advancements in industrial interoperability at SPS Italia 2026 in Parma, demonstrating how open standards are driving secure, deterministic, and vendor-independent communication across modern automation systems.
Key highlights were the live OPC UA FX multi-vendor demos with controllers and evaluation boards from multiple manufacturers exchanging real-time data seamlessly within a common communication framework. Additional exhibits featured an OPC UA Safety demonstration utilizing the OPC UA Safety Compliance Test Tool (UASCTT) and OPC UA Safety Stack, showcasing interoperable functional safety communication across heterogeneous automation environments.
The OPC Foundation Cloud Initiative also showcased OPC UA over MQTT, highlighting scalable cloud connectivity and seamless integration with Industrial IoT and edge computing applications. In addition, the initiative introduced a new set of requirements for next-generation industrial gateways, focusing on secure, semantic, and scalable asset onboarding using OPC UA, MQTT, Companion Specifications, the UA Cloud Library, and W3C Web of Things technologies. This marks an important step from simple protocol connectivity toward semantic interoperability as the foundation for Industrial Digitalization, Digital Twins, and Industrial AI.
We also like to thank our Partners from Systerel for joining the OPC Foundation booth with a Partner Pod and explaining the latest trends and updates to OPC UA and their offerings.
The strong interest from visitors, technology providers, and end users alike underscored the growing momentum behind OPC UA, OPC UA CX, OPC UA FX, and OPC UA Safety.
All the demonstrations provided further evidence that the industry is steadily moving toward a unified, interoperable automation ecosystem capable of securely connecting field devices, controllers, edge platforms, and cloud services through a standardized digitalization solution.
