OPC creates Technical Advisory Council

The OPC Foundation has announced the establishment of a 19 member Technical Advisory Council (TAC) to guide, monitor and approve the technical deliverables of its OPC Unified Architecture technology. Unified Architecture is an OPC solution for platform-independent and operating-system-independent, firewall-friendly, secure, reliable enterprise-wide connectivity.“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.”According to Burke, the 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. “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. I firmly believe that the TAC will be a significant factor in driving market success,” Burke said.“The TAC list includes Standards-making bodies with whom we already collaborate closely,” said Burke. 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.”

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