Editorial

The month of September through November for the OPC Foundation is always a very, very busy time of year. The end of September is the beginning of the North American seminar tour, and the OPC Foundation Booth at PackExpo in Las Vegas. The SPS/IPC/Drives show in Nuremberg, Germany takes place in November. There are also regional events in Finland and Belgium this year. I highly encourage you to take time out from your busy schedule and visit OPC at one of these numerous venues, and learn where OPC is going.

While IoT standards and interoperability are likely to be subjects of ongoing debate and discussion over the next few years, there are already well-established standards in industrial and manufacturing environments that can accelerate the shift to outcome-based models. In fact, OPC Unified Architecture is a platform independent service oriented architecture that provides standard models for secure and reliable information exchange in industrial automation across a range of manufacturing and resource industries.

One vision of Industry 4.0 is of a highly automated, harmonious production line that relies on minimal human intervention. This goal requires seamless communication between different machines, networks and applications. Luckily for industry, that’s where the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) protocol comes into play.

Welcome to the June 2015 edition of the OPC Connect newsletter. There are so many great things that are happening in the world of OPC Unified Architecture. OPC UA is getting international recognition as the interoperability platform for everything related to industrial automation, plus other domains, and the system solution for the Industrial Internet of Things and Industrie 4.0.

Welcome to the electrifying world of OPC Foundation 2015. There are a lot of exciting things happening on the technology and marketing perspectives in 2015. We continue to enhance and add additional transports that increase reliability and security for a variety of new hardware and software platforms already available or under development. From a marketing perspective, the OPC Foundation is choreographing many events that include our members evangelizing the OPC message of unified connectivity and interoperability. On behalf of the OPC Foundation staff we thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule to read this edition of the OPC Connect newsletter.

By Tom Burke, President and Executive Director of the OPC Foundation

This edition of the OPC Connect newsletter focuses on OPC engagement with building automation.

Since October 2012, we have had an active working group and collaboration between BACnet Interest Group Europe and the OPC Foundation. The fruits of the labor of this working group are about to be released as a companion specification at the end of this year.

This issue begins to highlight some of the success stories that we already have from our OPC vendors deploying products that solve critical integration opportunities between industrial automation and building automation.

The OPC Foundation conducts and attends several events throughout the year that showcase OPC technology and its member’s solutions. See what’s coming up next and what you may have missed.

By Tom Burke, President and Executive Director of the OPC Foundation

Welcome to the June edition of OPC Connect. The theme of this issue is OPC engagement in the Oil & Gas industry. The OPC Foundation has been actively collaborating with many segments of this sector to facilitate interoperable automation.

I am very excited about these collaborations, as they clearly demonstrate the commitment of our end-users and suppliers to the adoption of OPC UA. This newsletter highlights some of the major achievements of our…

The OPC Foundation conducts and attends several events throughout the year that showcase OPC technology and its member’s solutions. See what’s coming up next and what you may have missed.