So here is my take and feedback on the above article..

 

This is one of the best wriiten articles I have seen that is thought provoking and sends the message clearly about the complications of motivating vendors to insure successful deployment and adoption of open technology..  Hat's off to Dan Hebert for his well thought article. 

 

The title and first line gives me the opportunity to address the age old opportunity of negative perception.  But again the article Dan has put together in no way shape or form fits the category of negatve communication.  He understands and communcate the facts straight on, and send s message that has widely acclamied merit in the industry,  Fundamentally it comes down to the value proposition of interoperability for vendors and end-users.

 

A number of years ago we coined the phrase the good, the bad and the ugly when we had a presentation that my good friend Jerry Yen did it one of the OPC training events in Detroit.

 

With that in mind I wanted to publish and promote  the thoughts that some of the people in the media are talking about independent of it being positive or negative.

 

A long time ago my father taught me a valuable lesson.  We talked about negative publicity.  He always believed that the value proposition for negative publicity really can be turned into a significant blessing.   Always take a look at the negative and determine what portions are factual and require resolution.  The other side of the coin is if we were not successful people would not be criticizing us.   There's no value of negative publicity on something that nobody really cares about.  Therefore if we weren't successful,  people wouldn't be trying to find issues to talk about.  Why talk about something that nobody really cares about. 

 

so with that in mind I must do this justice and promote what the media has to say about us at points in time.  Essentially everyone has a right to their opinion. 

 

The value proposition for the OPC Foundation is all about delivering the right technology, processes and specifications that are end-user driven, and at the same time provide the vendor's the technology to accede to the end-user expectations for secure reliable interoperability. 

 

This is a daunting task to take on.  Yes we are crazy.  But we are sincere in our passion as we work with a multitude of vendors who really are the lifeblood of the organization developing the specifications, technology and certification.

 

When I left my previous employment a little over two years ago, I really did for reason.  My vision was to assemble a team that has the passion and vision for taking OPC to the next level.  We all knew the challenges we are facing with respect to solving the problems that are end-user's face on a daily basis.

 

But the world has spoken with respect to consumer electronics.  The expectations are reliable multivendor interoperability in consumer electronics.   The end-users continually ask the questions why fewer vendors tell us in automation that interoperability cannot be achieved, and we must pay for it when we want it, wherewith consumer-electronics the world would stop if we didn't have a free multivendor interoperability.  Imagine a world were you had to buy all the products from a consumer-electronics standpoint that were to be hooked together from a single vendor.  Would you do it?  Why should we force the end-users in automation to sacrifice interoperability when the world is dictated from the consumer-electronics perspective that interoperability is a given?

 

OPC UA will live up to its promise.   We have a solid set of people that have formed a team that are truly dedicated to make sure that we live up to the promises that we have made.   We are currently building three separate implementations of the OPC UA components, and essentially putting together a product infrastructure so that our vendors may easily be able to adopt and deploy real products based on the technology.  At the same time we are aggressively working on a complete certification program to make sure that the products that are based on OPC UA are of the highest quality and consistently exceed the end-user expectations for secure reliable interoperability.