OPC-UA goes mainstream

From PLCOpen.org presentation of February 2014

One of my most popular posts was Imagine OPC-UA Everywhere.  Since that post Triconix was reported to have integrated UA into their Trident safety PLC product.   Now two other significant events tell me OPC-UA has taken root firmly and we'll see soon OPC-UA embedded in most PLC controllers.

One event was the announcement today in Control Engineering - Europe entitled OPC-UA client function blocks for IEC 61131-3.   In that announcement was the following excerpt "...adding the OPC UA client functionality in the controller by defining a set of Function Blocks for IEC 61131-3.  This specification has just been released, making the controller an intelligent part in the IT communication."

The other announcement is even more significant in my book.   It's the release of the a new ControlLogix OPC-UA module made by OLDI.  I missed the Rockwell webinar about it yesterday and the information on OLDI's site is sparse, but it obviously sits on the CLX backplane so would seem to have access to at least a single controller's tags and maybe even more.  

The latter release will likely pressure other PLC manufacturers to do the same, and then I think the snowball really begins.

News Flash re OPC-UA

My recent post "Imagine OPC-UA Everywhere" has been one of the most active posts ever which indicates the high degree of interest in UA.  In that post I said once hardware providers start integrating OPC-UA into their products it will be a beautiful world, but I also said there is little motivation for them to do so.  Well the floodgates might be opening up sooner than I thought.  Invensys just made the following announcement...

"Invensys has also embedded OPC UA communications with its Triconex Trident and Triconex General Purpose safety instrumented systems. OPC UA maximizes interoperability between systems and streamlines connectivity through open platform architecture and future-proof design. The new communications interface module contains an embedded OPC UA server that supports up to 10 concurrent clients, delivering high performance and secure, reliable communication of real-time data, alarms and historical events."

The announcement just came out today.  The way I see it this is a major development in the forward progress of OPC-UA.  Who's next?

Imagine OPC-UA Everywhere

I did a little fact checking to find out if there are any PLC controllers available with OPC-UA embedded.  As far as I can tell, none are available yet.  I found a page for the OPC Technology Summit 2012 which has downloadable presentations from major automation vendors like Rockwell, Siemens, and ABB.  Each laid out their OPC-UA adoption roadmap.

How is it these presentations glow about the wonderful virtues of OPC-UA, yet you can't find a PLC with OPC-UA embedded?  (Please tell me if I'm wrong, I hope I am.) There's certainly no technological barrier preventing it. There are many OPC-UA development tools available from companies like Prosys OPC and OPC Labs. Embedded Labs even provides OPC-UA on a chip that costs less than five dollars.

Adoption Roadmap
But, there is a glimmer of hope. Each of these manufacturers has put embedded OPC-UA on their adoption roadmap. They say they are going to do it, but not one has said when. This is especially interesting when you consider Inductive Automation and most other pure software companies have had OPC-UA for years now. Works great.

So what's so special about OPC-UA? Secure, simple, cross platform, flexible, standardized.  Enough said?

Imagine OPC-UA Everywhere
Imagine a world of 100% OPC-UA.  Gets me all excited because it would take the pain out the subject of intercommunication, between devices, between enterprise applications, and between devices and enterprise applications. For example, from the Ignition server running right here on my desktop I can connect to any number of other Ignition servers running on other people's machines in just minutes. And I can connect to Kepware servers running on other machines with similar ease. Now if I only had a few OPC-UA-enabled PLCs to connect to, the world would be beautiful. I won't hold my breath.

Sadly, when I mention this beautiful vision people usually roll their eyes and sigh a wistful sigh. (Try it sometime, it's true.) They know it should be but there's a tacit reality that even though it would be right for end-users and integrators, there's little incentive for PLC vendors to be more open.

Security as an Incentive
However, there's a good reason for hardware vendors to adopt OPC-UA that has nothing to do with openness. It is the one thing they are being beaten up about and that's security. OPC-UA is very, very secure and that solves a lot of their problems. It has built-in encryption and can use certificates to ensure end-points are who they say they are. We wrote our OPC-UA client and server from the ground up (from the specification) which was no easy feat mainly because of all the security involved. And speaking of that, anyone who attempts to create proprietary security schemes based on secrecy is going to be the least secure of all. Encryption and security schemes that are exposed to general public scrutiny (like the OPC-UA specification) will be tested and vulnerabilities exposed so they can be fixed.

I wrote this post because I thought it would be fun to imagine what it would be like if the anarchy of endless communication protocols was gone and we could experience the simple, secure, and standardized beauty of OPC-UA to communicate between all devices and software applications.