Welcome to the first edition of “OPC Connect,” the 2005 OPC Foundation newsletter. You will receive this newsletter by e-mail every other month in 2005, and summaries will be published in select issues of Automation World magazines and at www.automationworld.com.
The OPC newsletter is taking on a new look for 2005, based on readership feedback in 2004. The contents of the newsletter will focus on end-user application articles to tell the story of how OPC technology can make your life easier and your operations more profitable. Each edition of the newsletter will contain a survey designed to solicit user feedback. Results will be used to drive OPC developments, and to communicate real answers to your most frequently asked questions.
The newsletter will also feature a marketing and technical update on the status of OPC activities, including OPC news from around the world and updates from the various OPC regions on their OPC activities. “OPC Connect” will be sponsored by OPC Foundation members, whose charter it is to raise the awareness of the OPC Foundation deliverables.
The OPC Foundation has already been very active in 2005, on both a technical and marketing front. Vendor participation in the OPC Foundation booths at past trade shows has driven an increase in the number of trade shows in which the OPC Foundation will participate. We will have an OPC booth this year at Hannover Fair in April 2005, at the ISA show in October 2005, and at the SPS show in November 2005, to name a few.
We’ve kicked off an OPC end-user advisory council to define the functionality and services that the end-user community wants vendors to deliver, in the form of quality products and services that are secure, reliable, and interoperable with other vendor products. There will be regularly scheduled electronic and face-to-face meetings of the OPC end-user advisory council. We invite additional end-users participation to help drive the vision of interoperability.
The OPC Foundation is continuing to work on the OPC Unified Architecture (UA) and has made significant progress toward completion of the first phase of the specifications. For more on the OPC UA, see the interview with OPC Foundation chief architect, Rashesh Mody, in this newsletter. Collaboration and consensus with other organizations and OPC members have truly fostered and facilitated a strong foundation that will provide a framework that defines interoperability, reliability and security for future products delivered from the OPC Foundation suppliers.
The OPC Foundation hosted a joint working group meeting in Houston in February 2005, where we brought together key representatives from ISA SP95 and MIMOSA to validate the OPC UA with respect to information models. The OPC UA team had a follow-up meeting to review an actual implementation of the unified architecture. When we first created the OPC Foundation, we established a rule whereby the specifications that the OPC Foundation develops must be accompanied by a reference sample implementation (sample code) as part of the release of the OPC specification. This allows us to validate that the OPC specification is technically feasible before vendors build products.
In April we will hold an OPC Unified Architecture developer’s conference at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. Included in this will be sessions focused at the best use of the Microsoft Indigo technology and other Microsoft technology for OPC Unified Architecture products. Following that event, the OPC UA task force will meet to further complete the review cycle of the OPC UA specifications, in preparation for their release targeted for Fall 2005.
OPC certification still continues to play a very key role in the overall OPC specification standards development, release and vendor deployment. We are in the process of extending the current compliance working group to further define and develop the enhanced certification process and certification tools. The OPC Foundation has provided tools for vendor self-certification of OPC servers, and hosts the OPC interoperability workshops in various geographic regions, as the mechanisms for interoperability testing of OPC clients and OPC servers. An OPC interoperability workshop is scheduled for the week of April 25th, 2005, in Tampa and we anticipate 40 vendors will be testing their OPC products for vendor interoperability. This year we have invited several end-users to serve as auditors for the interoperability workshop.
We are now taking OPC certification to the next level by developing an OPC certification program targeted at vendor independent certification. We will also create a formal OPC certification lab, which will be open to vendors and end users, for interoperability and staging of complex systems for advanced interoperability testing.
Last but not least, the year 2005 will mark the 10th anniversary of the OPC Foundation. We are planning an OPC event to be held Fall of 2005 to roll out the OPC Unified Architecture, and OPC marketing programs, as part of the celebration of this important milestone.
This newsletter will keep you informed of the many important OPC events and developments in 2005. Join us as we—OPC Connect…Driving Your Vision of Interoperability.
Thomas J. Burke
OPC Foundation President & Executive Director
