Following the launch of the OPC Foundation Cloud Initiative in April 2024, the OPC Foundation has announced the participation of cloud providers and industrial automation companies in the ongoing effort to enhance interoperability in IT and cloud environments leveraging OPC UA.
The OPC Foundation Cloud Initiative aims to accelerate interoperability of IT and cloud applications using OPC UA. The initiative focuses on several key areas:
- standardized interoperability by accelerating interoperability of IT and cloud applications using OPC UA—data analytics using AI, industrial data spaces, digital product passports, industrial metaverse, as well as digital twin applications
- creation of a cloud reference architecture to provide best practices, increase standardized data sharing and cloud-optimized profiles for the OPC UA standard
- semantic data models in the cloud by maintaining OPC UA information models (companion specifications) in the cloud to utilize the context of data in cloud services
- establishment of a new protected identity for OPC UA Cloud eXchange (UACX)
- establishment of validation and certification for OPC UA cloud interoperability.
The OPC UA Cloud Initiative steering committee includes cloud suppliers, such as Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Microsoft Azure and SAP Cloud. Additionally, industrial automation companies such as ABB, Beckhoff, Honeywell, Mitsubishi Electric, Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric, Siemens and Yokogawa are actively participating.
As the newest member, Praveen Rao, managing director, global head of manufacturing industry, Google Cloud, said, "Data interoperability among OT, IT and cloud environments is a key business driver for manufacturers. The OPC Foundation Cloud Initiative aligns with our commitment to open standards and ensuring our manufacturing customers have the tools and technologies they need to achieve seamless integration and unlock the full potential of their data in the cloud."
Twenty-five companies participated in the kickoff meeting of the end-user counsel, including Boehringer Ingelheim, ContiTech, Danone, Equinor, L’Oreal Operations, Miele, Mondelez, Renault-Group, Japan Tobacco International (JTI), Tetra Pak and Volkswagen.
These end users are working together to create and harmonize their IT and cloud environment requirements, aiming to achieve standardized and harmonized interoperability between providers and users, ultimately reducing integration and runtime costs.
Thierry Daneau, expert leader Industrie 4.0, Renault Group said, "Since 2017, Renault has chosen OPC UA, believing in its capacity to standardize within the highly diverse industrial environment. Today, thanks to a massive deployment with over 2,200 OPC UA servers and 15,000 connected devices, we are able to gather industrial data in a structured and standardized way. However, to enable data storage in the cloud and address scalability challenges, Renault had to make the decision to reduce the semantic richness of the OPC UA data. We strongly believe in the importance of the OPC UA Cloud Initiative working group, as it represents the final step toward OPC UA standardization in the cloud. We are confident that the outcomes from this working group will enable the preservation of the model structuring logic, even within the cloud layer, address the scalability challenge and, thus, achieve the vision of a fully structured and standardized data collection chain."
Stefan Hoppe, president and CEO of the OPC Foundation, emphasized the importance of this Cloud Initiative, saying, “OPC UA already transports telemetry data to the cloud via OPC UA over MQTT technology. I am pleased that OPC UA is now growing into the IT/cloud where it will support full interoperability between edge/cloud solutions such as digital twins, metaverse and dataspaces. This is the first time in the history of the OPC Foundation that we are also involving end users early on to validate the goals and concepts. My warm welcome to Google Cloud joining this Initiative. There is no other association like the OPC Foundation that brings together the who's who of OT, IT/cloud and end users in industrial automation on neutral ground to create a more securely connected and efficient future for industry."
The OPC Foundation has been promoting the development and adoption of the OPC information exchange standard since 1996. As an advocate and steward of these specifications, the OPC Foundation's mission is to help vendors, end users and software developers achieve interoperability of their manufacturing and automation resources.
