First off I really want to say I appreciate the excellent work and open communication from my members who spark some of my creative genius.   Okay one can argue how creative it is and it's really their lighting a fire underneath me J

My great colleagues are clearly are my best evangelists. 

The concept of developing open industrial standards and motivating competitive vendors to work together in a cooperative environment is really what OPC is all about.  I'm always quoted talking about success is measured by the level of adoption of the technology.  OPC UA is all about multiplatform multi-vendor secure reliable interoperability for industrial automation and beyond.  It leverages the great technology of all of our operating system vendors include Microsoft and the whole WCF based architecture. 

OPC UA was designed to meet the industry requirements of cross-platform, scalable, and enterprise-level data modeling. OPC Xi was designed to meet the more specific needs of applications looking to interface their existing COM based applications with Microsoft .NET based applications.

For complete information about the OPC Foundation technology portfolio go to the following links:

OPC Unified Architecture

OPC Xi

OPC Certification

Stay tuned to important announcements from many of the OPC vendors who are really the foundation of the OPC Foundation who are developing OPC UA products and services.  OPC UA is clearly designed to take advantage of the capabilities of embedded platforms all the way through the enterprise.  We deliberately designed the architecture to be totally scalable allowing easy deployment on a multitude of platforms.

Imagine OPC UA on a chip!   Can it really be done?   Imagine OPC UA embedded in a PLC or DCS platform!  Can it really be done?  Imagine OPC UA being a critical part of the infrastructure for the Smart Grid! Can it really be done?   Imagine the OPC Foundation collaborating with other consortiums in the spirit of developing standards that vendors adopt into real products!   Can this really be successful or is this an academic exercise in futility? 

The answer to the questions with the word CAN in the paragraph above is very simple.

One vendor has already announced a product with OPC UA on a chip.  OPC UA has already been successfully embedded in a number of PLC and DCS platforms.  OPC UA is actively on the radar for the Smart Grid, and on the NIST roadmap as the only recognized industry-standard.  OPC has already successfully collaborated with many consortiums, and is actively engaged in critical opportunities for advancing the whole concept of interoperability beyond where we ever dreamed we would go. 

For more information feel free to contact me directly, or check out the OPC Foundation website (www.opcfoundation.org)