Manufacturing

Alliance heralds first OPC-UA solution

7 May 2008

Manufacturing intelligence software developer Iconics has announced a new partnership with Kepware Technologies, a leader in OPC device communications for automation. The two companies have signed an agreement to create the world’s first end-to-end solution based on OPC Foundation's Unified Architecture (OPC-UA) standard.

The Iconics OPC-UA KEPServer integrates HMI/SCADA technology and visualization with a rich library of device connectivity from Kepware. Iconics says the 64-bit solution handles several different I/O devices and is certified for Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

“ICONICS and Kepware have been working together for more than ten years,” said Russ Agrusa, Iconics’ president and CEO. “Both our companies were instrumental in helping create the OPC-UA standard and we are excited to be delivering products based on it.”

“ICONICS and Kepware are both leading developers of OPC Unified Architecture solutions,” said Tom Burke, president of the OPC Foundation. “Both companies are pioneers in bringing OPC-UA from the theoretical into the physical and practical. This partnership agreement now makes OPC-UA a reality.”

Analyst Craig Resnick, research director of ARC Advisory Group said: “OPC-UA is intended to expand the framework for moving information between applications in the enterprise space by taking the existing OPC specifications and integrating them all together, leveraging Web Services as the key technology enabler in the new architecture for deploying applications such as asset management and true resource modelling that can use the OPC-UA specifications to move data and information.  This is why it is critical to manufacturers that any OPC-UA solution being implemented is sourced from partners who have extensive experience in deploying existing OPC solutions, which is certainly the case for both ICONICS and Kepware.”