The OPC Foundation in conjunction with the OPC Japan organization hosted OPC Unified Architecture Developer Conference in Japan during the month of November, 2006. Over 100 people were in attendance learning about the newest technology from the 10,000 foot level down to the bits and bytes detail of the OPC Foundation Unified Architecture Technology. Featured speakers included Thomas Burke, Jim Luth, and Randy Armstrong from the OPC Foundation North America.
The audience clearly demonstrated their commitment to building secure reliable interoperable products and solutions based on open standards specifically through their support and sincere interest in the OPC Foundation Unified Architecture Technology. The majority of the people in the room were developers who are actively promoting adoption of all aspects of OPC into their respective companies’ product portfolio.
OPC Japan has clearly demonstrated reliability and quality with all products that are developed by the respective OPC Foundation Members. An interoperability workshop was also hosted in August 2006 in Japan facilitating OPC Foundation Members to test their respective OPC products in an exhaustive method to guarantee improved end-user satisfaction for interoperable solutions. Internationally the end users expectations are about building complex systems assembling components from multiple vendors. A big message that comes out of OPC Japan is all about certifying and validating interoperability between products from different vendors long before the end-user has the opportunity to experience the power of interoperability.
Membership in the OPC Foundation from the Japanese companies currently has 36 corporate members, and another 13 members that have corporate offices outside of the Japanese boundary. The OPC Japan organization is working with the OPC Foundation to actively promote and encourage in increase in OPC Foundation members from Japan.
What I learned about the culture in my many visits to Japan is the importance that the Japanese put on competitors collaborating and working together to successfully help each other is respective companies in the development of products and solutions. The OPC Japan organization has both a marketing and technical team that meets regularly once a month or more in a collaborative fashion to make the best use both the OPC marketing and technical components and technology. Extensive work is done by the OPC Japan organization in the translation process of the OPC Foundation deliverables. One of the most interesting things is via the translation many ambiguities become clarified through the detailed reading and understanding that must be provided by the Japanese organization. The feedback from OPC Japan translation with respect to resolving ambiguities in the OPC specifications cannot be underestimated. They have caught any simple things that seem to go overlooked when you look at something so many times. With that I think the OPC Japan organization for their dedicated review process of the OPC deliverables.
The benefits of being a member of the OPC Foundation are all about vendors being able to develop reliable quality products that demonstrate the vision of the OPC Foundation for high performance secure reliable interoperable products and solutions. The OPC Foundation as a benefit to being a member of the OPC Foundation provides a rock solid certification program that ensures validation that the OPC Foundation members have best-of-breed quality products ensuring and exceeding the end-user expectations for secure reliable interoperability.
The OPC Japan organization is very stable. Their dedication to open standards and interoperability sets the example for all of our counterparts outside of Japan to follow suit to develop and deploy products that exceed the quality interoperable expectations of our end-users.