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OPC moves away from components

01 November, 2003

OPC moves away from components

The OPC Foundation has revealed that it is planning to migrate its specifications away from its traditional component-based approach, towards a "unified architecture", based on interoperable products with Internet connectivity. The move follows the Foundation`s recent announcement that it was moving away from its previous reliance on Microsoft`s COM/DCOM framework, which had limited its use to corporate intranets..

The OPC Foundation`s new vision is to provide unrestricted communications and to allow users to choose whichever platform they want. It says that the new unified architecture will increase reliability, redundancy and information throughput, and make development and integration easier.

The component-based approach will remain valid - there are already more than 3,000 OPC products being used in millions of installations - but the Foundation expects suppliers to start using the services of the new architecture for new products. Existing products will be able to plug into the new Web services allowing them to export their data beyond corporate boundaries.

OPC Foundation president Tom Burke says that the move has been coming for some time and responds to end-users` demands for interoperability between applications from different vendors. "What OPC brings to the party is an open methodology for delivering the benefits to everyone," he declares. "This is the beginning of enhanced interoperability between the factory floor and the enterprise."