"We are right on schedule," says Stefan Hoppe, Global Vice President of the OPC Foundation, adding: "OPC UA adaptation in Europe has always been ahead of the curve thanks to the Industry 4.0 hype. However, the pressure on the market is also causing a huge increase in acceptance in North America." Hoppe cites the fact that, following Emerson, Rockwell Automation, a major player, announced OPC UA server and client integration in its Logix 5480 controllers at the beginning of November.

The Companion Standards

The increased number of devices and machines to be certified is now also leading to a second 'OPC Lab Europe' in Germany starting its service at the beginning of the year, where non-OPC members can now also have their products certified. The increasing number of OPC UA Companion Standards will also be certified here; tests for PLCopen and AutoID are currently in preparation. Initiated by Siemens and Harting, the German AIM-D group finalized the specification for the AutoID industry in 2016 within just two years. Both companies are already supplying their RFID devices with an integrated OPC UA server and semantically identical interface, and other manufacturers have announced their implementation. In Germany, the VDMA in particular, with its 38 trade associations, is promoting the idea of OPC UA Companion Standards: As a pioneer, the injection molders presented 'OPC UA for Euromap77' at this year's K trade fair; the 'Machine Vision' group started work in May and Kuka is driving forward corresponding activities for robotics. The VDMA is acting as coordinator for these activities and is preparing a guideline for its members in addition to other standards for 2017.

But progress is also being made internationally: an initial implementation of OPC UA for PackML was launched two weeks ago in Chicago. And the oil & gas industry is already testing the semantics defined by MDIS.

Microsoft is pro OPC UA

"In the automation industry, OPC UA is flying on auto-pilot, which is attracting other global players," says Stefan Hoppe. Take Microsoft, for example: the company is now making the Azure IoT Gateway SDK with OPC UA extensions available as an open source release version for the trade fair; Microsoft has also announced rapid support for OPC Classic. The solution enables OPC-enabled devices and machines to interact with the Azure IoT Suite: telemetry data can now be pushed to the Azure Cloud. Furthermore, command and control tasks from Azure can be easily and securely implemented back into the device. One of the first integrators of this solution is OPC newcomer Hewlett Packard Enterprise: the HPE Edgeline Server EL20 is an industrial-grade IoT gateway and is also suitable for data aggregation and edge analytics tasks thanks to its high computing power. "Microsoft thinks highly of OPC UA," says Hoppe. In Windows 10 presentations, OPC UA is listed as the only standard for "Industrial IoT". The Vice President lists Cisco and Eaton (USA), LG (Korea), JTEKT and Renesas (Japan) as well as Lenze and Leuze (Germany) as other new big players in the OPC Foundation.

Not only in the industry

Stefan Hoppe is optimistic about the implementation of OPC UA as a global standard for IoT: "OPC UA is already established in the Industry 4.0 environment, there are three testbeds with OPC UA in the Industrial Internet Consortium; OPC UA is on the roadmap as a national standard for the Chinese initiative 'China 2025' by the end of 2016." A new free OPC UA logo member category is intended to increase the visibility of OPC UA. Hoppe also refers to other communication solutions with a little side blow: "OPC UA is not a competitor to MQTT, AMQP or other protocols; anyone who believes this has not understood OPC UA as a framework for secure data exchange regardless of the transport level!" Hoppe believes there is still work to be done here to educate people: "We are not demonizing these transport layers, but rather using them for technology-driven extensions such as OPC UA Pub/Sub via UDP, AMQP and MQTT. This is precisely why OPC UA has the potential to become an accepted global standard for the IIoT, far beyond the automation industry."