In the beginning, OPC was defined as a three letter acronym that stood for OLE for process control.  Six months after the first draft of the OPC specification was available and vendors began to adopt the technology as a standard for moving data from devices to the first-tier visualization applications, we all recognize that we were going to be far more than a standard that only enabled process control applications.

With the OPC Unified Architecture, clearly the direction was established for exchanging data/information both vertically and horizontally between devices and any application you can imagine or ever dream of.  But the true beauty of the OPC Unified Architecture is how we collaborate and partner with all the other standards organizations who have standardized information modeling.  OPC now provides the infrastructure supporting all the services necessary for enabling secure reliable interoperability,  where the data/information is really the information model from the respective standard organization.  This facilitates standards organizations to have the necessary infrastructure supporting the discovery and communication of information between the devices/applications primary to their domain of expertise, and with generic(or domain independent) devices/applications.  This integration opportunity expands the functionality and capability for both the vendors and end users that previously were isolated to the applications and devices that were uniquely created for the specific domain.

The success of OPC in the early on was based on competitors working together in the interest of standardizing on data discovery and exchange between devices on the factory floor and the first-tier visualization applications.  Competitors wanted to work together, and ultimately the vendors and end users benefited from the OPC standard being adopted.

The OPC Unified Architecture now extends that same competitors working together model, to have consortiums working together that define information models for their specific domain.  So now we have the vendors to develop devices and applications based on the technology/specifications from the consortium standard organization,  working together across domains in the interest of providing best-of-breed components and solutions expanding horizon of interoperability.

It's very important that we continue to identify the collaborative partners that OPC should be working with,  not to facilitate necessarily standards harmonization, but to provide the necessary infrastructure and both technical and verbal communication between the standards organizations to facilitate the sense of cooperation that all vendors and end users really clamor about.

In October, under the OpenO&M umbrella with ISA we are gathering together all the leaders and visionaries of the respective standards organizations to extend the awareness and communication between all of us as we further address both tactical and strategic alternatives for integration that spans all the horizontal and vertical domain opportunities.