HANNOVER, Germany, April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Monday at
Hannover Messe 2016, Microsoft Corp. announced it is working with
the OPC Foundation to enable virtually any industrial Internet of
Things (IoT) scenario through interoperability between the millions
of applications and industrial equipment compliant with the OPC UA
standard. Microsoft will further enable its industrial IoT
customers to connect a broad range of manufacturing equipment and
software that can span decades of investment with extended support
of the OPC UA open source software stack.
Interoperability between devices and assets is critical for
today's factories, which are increasingly bringing new and legacy
systems online and modernizing their plants and facilities. OPC UA
provides a standardized communication, security, and metadata and
semantics abstraction for the majority of industrial equipment. It
also serves as a gateway to cloud-enabled industrial equipment,
including data and device management, insights, and machine
learning capabilities for equipment that was not designed with
these capabilities built in.
Microsoft's extended support for the OPC UA open source software
stack spans its IoT offerings, from local connectivity with Windows
devices to cloud connectivity via the Microsoft Azure platform.
Integration with Azure IoT allows customers to easily send OPC UA
telemetry data to the Azure cloud, as well as to command and
control their OPC UA devices remotely from the Azure cloud. In
addition, Windows 10 devices running the Universal Windows Platform
can connect and openly communicate with other IoT devices via OPC
UA.
"As Industry 4.0 reaches a tipping point, we believe that
openness and interoperability between hardware, software and
services will help manufacturers transform how they operate and
create solutions that benefit employees' productivity," said
Sam George, director, Azure Internet
of Things at Microsoft. "Microsoft's support of OPC UA in Azure IoT
and Windows IoT will reduce barriers to industrial IoT adoption and
help deliver immediate value."
"OPC UA is widely recognized as a key communication technology
for the Industry 4.0 initiative," said Thomas J. Burke, OPC Foundation president and
executive director. "Microsoft's support for standards that foster
IoT innovation, and specifically for OPC and OPC UA, results in
easy, direct and more secure communications from programmable logic
controllers on the shop floor to the top-floor world of IT."
"OPC UA is the single, neutral, widely accepted standard to
embrace the complex world of automation devices to easily and
securely connect them everywhere," said Stefan Hoppe, OPC Foundation vice president.
"With the adoption by Microsoft to its Windows 10 operating system
and Azure cloud, the OPC UA standard passes the critical milestone
of general acceptance by the broader IT world."
More information on Microsoft's work with the OPC Foundation,
and its support of OPC UA, is available at the Microsoft Booth at
Hannover Messe in Hall 7, Booth C40.
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) is the leading platform and
productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and
its mission is to empower every person and every organization on
the planet to achieve more.
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SOURCE Microsoft Corp.