I'm very excited about the new working group that the first kickoff meeting was held today May 6, 2009.   A charter for the group was initially developed and approved by the OPC Technical Advisory Council, and approved as well by the OPC Foundation Board of Directors.   

We had 26 people participating from a variety of companies and domains,  most of which have already developed and released OPC UA products,  including companies that provide enabling technology and toolkits to other vendors.

There is a fairly aggressive schedule that will require active participation from the vendor volunteer installed base,   and a secondary set of vendors that will be used as reviewers.   The driving force behind this working group is to take the released OPC UA technology and specifications,  and provide additional profiles, technology components and corresponding enhanced documentation to further expand the market reach of the OPC technology and adoption into products for both industrial automation and other domains.

The role of the toolkit vendors plays a critical role in the successful adoption of the OPC technology by many vendors.   It is not the intention of the OPC Foundation to compete in any way shape or form with the OPC Foundation member community.  The role of the OPC Foundation is to provide a solid foundation of specifications technology and process to enable toolkit vendors to become the front line for other vendor companies to successfully design and develop and deploy OPC products and services.

We are currently working on licensing strategies,  and the expectation is that the OPC Foundation will further enhance adoption of the technology by providing a license strategy that allows and encourages members and nonmembers to rapidly deploy OPC Unified Architecture products into the marketplace.

The following companies participated in this kickoff meeting:

ABB

Artesis

ascolab

CAS

EURIWARE

ICONICS

Ing.-Büro Allmendinger

Kepware

Matrikon

OPC Foundation

OSIsoft

Schlumberger

Siemens

Smar

Software Toolbox Inc.

Unified Automation GmbH

Yokogawa Corporation of America

We actively encourage the OPC Foundation member companies to participate in working groups and helping carve out the vision of the future of interoperability.   Companies that participate in this working group and other working groups really are the drivers behind the specifications and technology that the OPC Foundation produces.   The leading-edge companies in the industrial open standard domain always make sure that their company's best interests are maintained by active participation in the OPC Foundation working groups.   These leading-edge companies all so are the ones that rapidly deploy and certify their products for true multiplatform secure reliable interoperability.  

From an end-user perspective, the value proposition for the OPC Unified Architecture is all about plug-and-play interoperability for moving data/information between anything and anywhere.   Ease-of-use, multiplatform, high-performance, enhanced security, and true reliability/redundancy are the key attributes of the OPC Unified Architecture.    The OPC UA Accelerated Adoption Working Group focuses on providing the vendors and the end-user's a solid platform and infrastructure for building OPC Unified Architecture products and applications.

OPC Foundation Members may download the meeting minutes.  The minutes even contain a link to an audio/video recording of the entire meeting.  The SharePoint site with the minutes requires a log in.  See the SharePoint FAQ for instructions.