Thomas Burke President and Executive Director OPC Foundation

Thomas J. Burke has been an officer for the OPC Foundation since the start of OPC, and is currently the President & Esceutive Director of the OPC Foundation.  Thomas was one of the founding members of OPC; he was the architect for the OPC Data Access Specifications.  He has served as the designer and leader for the OPC Compliance and all the OPC Data Access specifications. Tom’s vision is the OPC Unified Architecture, which is a multi-vendor multiplatform service-oriented architecture that addresses the unification of all the OPC Foundation specifications providing the standard for multi-vendor multi-platform secure reliable interoperability integrating the plant floor with the enterprise.

Thomas has been instrumental in the success of the OPC Foundation both from a technical and marketing standpoint.  His creativity and vision has truly provided a community where competitors and consortiums work together to develop the best specifications, technology, certification and process that truly are  the driving force for vendors to successfully adopt certified interoperable products into the marketplace.   Thomas's philosophy and motivation for OPC is to architect the vision where success is measured by the level of adoption.

Thomas has been driving Collaboration with other organizations serves as the foundation for integration information,  and is one of the many key components in the OPC Unified Architecture.  

Security is as an absolute requirement by the end users and suppliers and is one of the motivating factors for vendors to quickly adopt and bring OPC UA products to market; because of the easy to use advanced security features built into the architecture.  Thomas has been championing this effort to validate the security features in the OPC deliverables.

The OPC classic specifications have been adopted by approximately 3500 different companies resulting in over 22,000 different products,  and the estimated number of actual products installed and in use is over 15 million.

Thomas was a senior software architect for Rockwell Automation, and has developed & managed significant hardware & software projects for Rockwell /Allen-Bradley & NCR over his 30 year career.

Thomas graduated from John Carroll University with a BS in Mathematics, and graduated from the University of Dayton with a MS in Computer Engineering.

Contact Thomas @ Thomas.Burke_AT_OPCFoundation.org