Next week is a very busy week for OPC members. The 2008 North America Interoperability Event is happening at Wonderware in California from March 31-April 4th. These interoperability events not only provide vendors with the opportunity to validate and certify their products, it is an excellent opportunity to debug and diagnose any interoperability problems that might pop up with other products. It’s also important to remember that in order for an OPC DA Client to pass certification, the product must be tested at an Interoperability Workshop and it must pass a supervised test with the OPC Analyzer. Serious end-users and integrators will demand the certification logo on OPC products, and IOP events are the way to get them.
Here’s the laundry list of committed OPC vendors that are attending this year: ARC Informatique, Canary Labs, Inc., Cogent Real-Time Systems Inc., Cyberlogic Technologies, Inc., GE Fanuc Automation, ICONICS, Inc., Inductive Automation, InduSoft LLC, Ing.-Buero Allmendinger, Junot Systems, Inc., Kepware Technologies, MatrikonOPC, Mobiform Software, Inc., Molex Incorporated, MSIndustrie Software GmbH, OSIsoft, Inc., Rockwell Automation, Siemens AG, SMAR Research Corporation, Software Toolbox, Inc., Takebishi Corporation, and Wonderware. If your vendor is not on the list, you might want to ask them why not…
This year vendors will also have the opportunity to test any OPC UA products they have under development, although the tests are not official or recorded at this time. It will be interesting to see who products show up, since there are many companies who are actively working on new OPC UA products. Once the final OPC UA deliverables are met and the Profiles fully defined, the OPC Interoperability events will be a whole new ballgame!
Speaking of OPC UA deliverables, that leads into the next important happening next week the Technical Advisory Council meeting in Redmond. The TAC has a full agenda of discussion items, including: latest drafts and releases of the specifications, progress report on the code deliverables and what are the next steps in continuing to facilitate OPC UA deployment. The main focus will be on the process of completing, maintaining and supporting the OPC UA deliverables. What’s working well. What needs to be done to improve areas that need help. What are the next milestones for the maintenance and validation infrastructure needed to support the impending OPC UA product releases. All in all it is sure to be a very busy day. Of course no one ever said developing the next generation of interoperable enterprise connectivity was going to be easy. :)
The TAC meeting dovetails with the Microsoft Manufacturing Operations Forum so everyone will get a chance to see the roadmap for Microsoft products in the manufacturing arena. One of the key topics is ‘Unified Communications’ which will most likely be very interesting from an OPC UA viewpoint.
Check back here for updates on the news and results from this very busy week in OPC.