Onboard the 'Unified Architecture' train

The OPC Foundation and four of its member companies officially announced the new Unified Architecture (OPC-UA) for data and information sharing between the plant floor and the enterprise at the ARC Advisory Group's annual forum in Boston in June. OPC-UA unifies all existing OPC specifications and leverages service-oriented architecture (SOA) based Web services technology as the communication mechanism with enterprise systems. Interoperability is "not about data anymore, but information - taking information from the shop floor to the top floor," said Tom Burke, president and executive director of OPC, during the press briefing. "We started by looking at all the protocols in our domain. The number is huge. We have thousands of applications and devices and protocols out there - and how do we make it all work together? The [OPC-UA] concept is about supporting all that and making OPC real.