Schwabach, April 2012. The large installed base of ‘classic’ OPC products can easily migrate to the new OPC Unified Architecture (UA) technology. To benefit from its enhancements, like reliable, secure and encrypted data transfer even through firewalls, the DCOM based communication is simply replaced with UA-Binary protocol.
Many vendors of today’s ‘classic’ OPC products, like OPC servers for PLCs or SCADA/HMI systems, want to UA enable their products and begin with related cost-benefit analysis. Even though with “classic” OPC they already have a solution that works for the majority of use cases, some underlying systems can not benefit from the rich features of a native UA integration. In addition the vendors want to avoid development costs, efforts for integration into configuration tools and of course system testing costs. On the other hand existing installed products can not easily be updated and replaced with UA enabled variants, the possibility for ‘classic” OPC communication shall remain.
Unified Automation GmbH noticed the market need for a seamless migration to OPC UA technology and now offers a simple solution for all OEMs. The software is bound to the OEMs particular ‘classic’ OPC server (DA, A&E or HAD), meaning that it can only connect to this particular server and transparently maps all existing data points and provides them in UA style. No configuration and no programming are required. The software can be integrated into the OEMs setup or can be installed separately on existing products. On-site customers can easily upgrade to OPC UA technology and benefit from its fast and secure protocol without neither change of configuration nor any programming. The ‘classic’ OPC interface remains accessible for legacy connectivity.
“This product will close the gap between the large installed base of ‘classic’ OPC products and the new development of products with fully integrated UA capabilities.” says Jürgen Boxberger CEO of Unified Automation GmbH “The goal was to keep it simple and easy to use without losing any performance.”
Once on the OPC UA protocol, reliable, secure, encrypted and authenticated communication without any DCOM headaches can be done even through firewalls or over the internet. Furthermore ‘classic’ OPC products will be enabled to exchange information with Unix and Linux systems or talk to embedded devices. For OEMs this new software solution is the simplest and fastest way of migrating existing products to OPC Unified Architecture, especially when looking at short time to market and return on invest periods. The OEM UaGateway is licensed once against the product of the OEM, there are no further runtime licenses required.
