OPC UA: The communication standard for the Internet of Things?

As we prepare for the expansion of the IoT (Internet of Things), many companies today are looking for ways to take advantage of the opportunities that are beginning to present themselves. Of course, as with everything new, there are many questions and concerns.

Many organizations are struggling with interconnectivity. How do we get existing information systems to communicate with new information systems? If leveraging the IoT requires a completely rebuilt information infrastructure and a complete reformat of business processes, well, that won’t work for most people.

There are also organizations that will have questions about how to make use of the unstructured data coming in real time from several different sources. How can they create the context to translate this endless stream of raw data into useful information?

And what about the scalability and flexibility needed to cope with growth and change? After all, if the changes implemented today need to be undone to keep up with the future needs of your organization, is it really worth it?

Another common concern is safety. Are we going to send sensitive information to the cloud, where it can be exposed to a number of potential threats ranging from cyber terrorism to corporate espionage? And even if our confidential data is not transmitted over the Internet, how do we protect these interconnected systems from insider threats? How can we ensure that our employees and contractors have access to all the information they need to do their jobs and nothing else?

These and many other questions are preventing some organizations from realizing the many benefits of the IoT. Some think it will be too difficult or expensive to implement; others may question its value. Fortunately for all of us, these questions have been asked for several years and there are answers.

The communication protocol often cited as best suited for IoT applications has already been developed, tested and implemented in live environments around the world since it was fully launched in 2009.

The Unified OPC Architecture (UA) is a platform-independent, service-oriented architecture developed and maintained by the OPC Foundation. As an interoperability standard for industrial automation, OPC has become an integral part of most SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems. As data systems expand beyond their traditional roles to include more sensor data and consolidate data from multiple systems, it makes sense that the OPC Foundation has stayed at the forefront of the standardization process and developed a standard of communication that has been adopted by industry advocates. 4.0 and the Internet of Things: companies like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, GE and many others,

OPC UA is universally accepted because it directly addresses the obstacles faced by organizations involved in IoT implementation projects. The problem of interconnectivity, for example, is exactly the problem for which the communication standard was developed. Today, there are OPC drivers for thousands of different devices, and many devices today are manufactured with integrated OPC servers to allow exactly this type of interoperability with other devices and systems.

Concerns about the utility of data from multiple systems are addressed through information modeling. The OPC UA information modeling framework turns data into actionable information. With full object-oriented capabilities, even the most complex multilevel structures can be modeled and extended. Information modeling also makes an OPC UA-based system significantly more customizable and extensible. As virtual representations of real systems, information models can be modified or expanded to meet the changing needs of a modern business.

Of course, one of the most important considerations when choosing a communication technology is security, which is one of the great benefits of OPC UA. Security is provided in a number of ways, including: session encryption, message signing, authentication, user control, and auditing of user activity.

Although it is difficult to say that there is something “standard” in the Internet of Things, OPC UA is the closest thing we have to a communication standard, and every day it is more accepted and adopted.