OPC Foundation is Firmly Committed to the Internet of Things

The OPC Foundation has recently decided to allow free access to the source code, specifications, and technology of OPC-UA. In this way, companies, consortia, and end users will not have to be members of the OPC Foundation.

This strategy makes clear the intention of the OPC Foundation to make OPC a standard, not only in the industry, but in all sectors in which a reliable and secure exchange of data between devices and systems is needed. I am referring, effectively, to the Internet of Things, where the amounts of data to be transported can be enormous.

By making the OPC-UA specifications available, all interested parties will be able to test and learn about the power of OPC-UA and what it can do for secure and reliable interoperability to move data and information between embedded systems and the cloud.

It is evident that at this time we are in a situation in which the IoT world will open new opportunities for companies, and that a multitude of protocols are being defined for data transport, such as MQTT, CoAP, REST services, etc. And the OPC Foundation does not want to miss this opportunity to make OPC one of those standards.

Not only has it left free access to its specifications, but it is actively participating in Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 initiatives, trying to promote its service-oriented architecture and its information model. To this end, it has created a working group to expand the platform and include Publish-Subscribe methods and support for TSN (Times Sensitive Networks), allowing OPC-UA to adapt to high speeds and supporting a certain real time. These improvements will make OPC-UA the communications solution between devices and applications from different manufacturers