We had a good, long and involved TAC meeting on Wednesday. Lots of good information, updates and discussions. Over the next few posts, I’ll share some of the results.
One topic is the OPC Foundation is preparing several OPC UA opportunities that are geared toward facilitating OPC UA adoption. Since folks have been working on OPC UA for a while now, there are different people who are at different stages along the track. To meet all these needs, the OPC Foundation is offering different events. To determine which event best fits the people in your company depends on which of the following statement or question best describes your situation. If you are asking…
What is OPC UA? – As the OPC UA implementation continues to roll out, more and more people want to get a better understanding of what it offers. One of the best events for getting more details on OPC UA would be to attend the annual DevCon for architects, visionaries, end users and integrators. This year’s DevCon is slated for Munich on October 27-29th (more details on that later). Another opportunity would be to check out the OPC Foundation Roadshows. Upcoming ones are in Pittsburgh, Apr 17th and Seattle, May 15th.
We Know about OPC UA. How do we start developing products? These folks should attend the OPC UA Developers' Workshop, slated for June 16-18 in Scottsdale. This three-day training event is target specifically for product developers. The first day covers the details of OPC UA and the next two full days of specific instructions using either C++ / ANSCI C or .NET programming. This is course is hands-on development on building OPC UA servers and clients. The workshop is limited to 25 participants and attendance will be on a first-come, first-served basis. So get registered and get programming.
We have OPC UA products. How can we get validation and start testing? If you are this far along, you are probably already aware of the OPC UA Developer Plug Fest, June 2-6 in Foxboro, MA. At the TAC meeting several vendors gave updates on native OPC UA products they have in progress or slated for release this year including ABB, ICONICS, Kepware, Matrikon, OSI and Siemens. I’m sure the other TAC members are in a better position to post on the details and timelines of their companies OPC UA products.
It’s looking to be an exciting year for OPC UA implementation and adoption. Certainly there are many vendors and end-users talking about OPC UA at the Microsoft Manufacturing Forum and the benefits it can bring to the manufacturing space. More to come on that.