OPC Foundation Announces Formation of Technical Advisory Committee
July 9, 2007;

OPC FOUNDATION CREATES TECHNICAL ADVISORY COUNCIL TO REVIEW DELIVERABLES Third party organizations join key team to drive strategy and monitor and approve quality. For more information contact Tom Burke at thomas.burke@opcfoundation.org or at 480-483-6644.

The OPC Foundation has announced the establishment of an 18 member Technical Advisory Council (TAC) to guide, monitor and approve the technical deliverables of its OPC Unified Architecture technology.

Unified Architecture is the platform- and OS-independent, firewall-friendly, secure, reliable OPC solution for enterprise-wide connectivity. With OPC Unified Architecture end users can easily exchange data between controller products and systems on the factory floor and in higher level IT systems. Unified Architecture is the result of many man-years of development and draws on the 10+ years of field experience gained from products based on Windows-reliant DCOM technology. The Foundation vision for Unified Architecture is to deliver true enterprise-wide openness for data exchange in the manufacturing industries.

Tight Certification disciplines are being implemented to ensure the quality of OPC Unified Architecture products, said OPC Foundation President Tom Burke, but ultimately someone has to approve everything we do. Therefore, we have invited a variety of stakeholders to be part of that process. These include Board and non-Board members who have committed to UA, and also third party organizations.

The 18 third party organizations currently involved in the Council are ABB, Emerson, Fieldbus Foundation, Honeywell, ICONICS, IEC, Invensys, Kepware, Matrikon, OPC Foundation, OSIsoft, Rockwell, SAP, Siemens, SISCO, WBF, Wonderware and Yokogawa. OPC President, Tom Burke said: This step adds to the strength of our Early Adopter group. As well as evangelizing Unified Architecture, TAC members will act as the representatives of all members. In effect they will be the gatekeepers of our organization and a Steering Committee driving future strategy. As a result, all Unified Architecture output will be rock solid, guaranteeing the quality of our members products and providing end users with the assurances they need. I firmly believe that the TAC will be a significant factor in driving market success.

Burke added: The TAC list includes Standards-making bodies with whom we already collaborate closely. This demonstrates that OPC Unified Architecture is no longer the preserve of technical experts but an integral part of the future of manufacturing automation. I am now confident that we can deliver reliable solutions that will genuinely support the enterprise-wide openness being demanded by automation and IT systems world-wide.

The OPC Foundation is a non-profit international standards organization dedicated to providing standards for interoperability in industrial automation. The OPC specifications are open and interoperable interface standards that leverage the functionality and technology of the Microsoft operating systems and architecture (that the standards were originally based and conceived on), and also leverage the technology of XML and Web services (as the key to interoperability between factory floor and the enterprise). The specifications have been created through a collaboration of leading worldwide automation and hardware and software suppliers cooperating together to solve critical end-user interoperability problems.

Back