The Feed Forward blog has a posting on the recent OPC Survey.  (Which I told you about a while back, so I’m sure everyone took the time to give their feedback. Right?) Gary recaps the highlights of the survey, so I’ll hit the highlights of the highlights…

·          Respondents were fairly evenly distributed among various industries with Oil & Gas Production, Power Generation and Chemicals the top three. Following the top tier were Oil & Gas distribution, Pharmaceutical, Water Treatment, Buildings & Building Automation, Automotive and Metals & Mining.
(It’s nice to see Building Automation continuing to gain ground in OPC.  I wonder if the ‘green’ movement plays a role in this? )

·          94% of the polled companies currently use OPC technology with a third said sometimes while 59 percent were often or always.

·          The most used application for OPC was visualization (66 percent). Control (60 percent) and data archiving (58 percent) followed closely. About half use OPC for internal data exchange while external access to data was used by 43 percent.
(It was not that long ago that OPC would never have been considered for any control type application.  We’ve come a long way baby)

·          When asked about technologies that might be used for data exchange in the future, about 1,100 said they would mostly use OPC technology. Only about 320 each noted a majority of data exchange would be by proprietary driver or other standard (not specified). .
(Many people see the benefits of using standardized OPC over proprietary solutions)

·          Nearly three-fourths of the respondents found OPC classic technology useful, but half of those said it could be improved. Only 20 percent were negative with only 5 percent calling the technology defective or unusable.
 (Useful but could use improvement.  That’s one of the messages that drove the need for OPC UA)

·          Forty-five percent had favorable opinions of the new OPC UA technology, but 42 percent were unfamiliar with it. Meanwhile 60 percent thought that OPC technology would be more important for their business in the future compared to only 6 percent who thought less important.
 (42% unfamiliar with OPC UA? Obviously more people need to be reading the OPC blogs . Help spread the message of OPC UA and tell a friend about OPC Exchange J )

An American friend sent this my way the other day, and I had to post it.  Those of you outside North America might not get all the references, but I’m sure there are Northern/Southern Europe or Mountain/Costal region equivalents (with a Football/Soccer punchline).

The Official Canadian Temperature Conversion Chart

 

50° Fahrenheit (10° C)

Californians shiver uncontrollably.

Canadians plant gardens.

 

35° Fahrenheit (1.6° C)

Italian Cars won’t start

Canadians drive with the windows down

 

32° Fahrenheit (0 ° C)

American water freezes

Canadian water gets thicker.

 

0° Fahrenheit (-17.9° C)

New York City landlords finally turn on the heat.

Canadians have the last cookout of the season.

 

-60° Fahrenheit (-51° C)

Mt. St. Helens freezes.

Canadian Girl Guides sell cookies door-to-door.

 

-100° Fahrenheit (-73° C)

Santa Claus abandons the North Pole.

Canadians pull down their ear flaps.

 

-173° Fahrenheit (-114° C)

Ethyl alcohol Freezes.

Canadians get frustrated when they can’t thaw the keg

 

-460° Fahrenheit (-273° C)

Absolute zero; all atomic motion stops.

Canadians start saying “cold, eh?”

 

-500° Fahrenheit (-295° C)

Hell freezes over.

The Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup

As a Canadian living in the more northern climes I’d have to say it is pretty accurate.  Although -17.9° C is a bit warm to stop having cookouts.  I’ve fired up the BBQ on the deck below  -25° C on more than one occasion.  Just this weekend the local Scouts had a door-to-door bottle drive fundraiser, although kids under 7 years old were excused on account of the -41° C windchill.  Seriously.  (And of course no self respecting Canadian would ever allow a keg to freeze.  We would burn priceless art and the last standing walls before that would happen.)

Of course for industries that operate year round in these climates such as oil refineries, chemical plants and paper mills.  Extreme weather conditions are no joking matter when it comes to keeping plants running, and OPC plays a role here too.  Some applications use OPC to monitor the thousands of critical heat tracing points in their system.  The OPC Server for Modbus is a popular choice for this.  And of course the MatrikonOPC Building Automation Server Suite ensures connectivity to all a plant’s environmental control systems.

Some interesting stuff happening in the OPC world this week.

·          Randy Armstrong enters the blogsphere with the OPC UA Developers blog.  With more and more OPC UA products coming to light, the posts on walking developers through the basics of implementing OPC UA will be a welcome addition to the OPC community.

·          Cimetrics will be showcasing some new products at the AHR Expo in Chicago next week, including the BACnet OPC Server v5.0

·          OPC Foundation is again a sponsor the  ARC Forum in Orlando, Feb. 2-5.  The theme is “Winning Strategies and Best Practices for Sustainable Manufacturing”.  An apt focus for these tough economic times.  There are many ways OPC can help optimize operations, reduce downtime and save money.

In the famous words of Bob Dylan, the times they are a-changin’.  Many people out there in the US and elsewhere see Tuesday as the beginning of big changes. As OPC UA continues to mature, the OPC landscape will continue to change.  Since the spirit of change seems to be blowin’ in the wind, I decided to change things up a bit with the OPC Exchange blog.  I hope to post more often and shorter segments. 

Reviewing the blog traffic for the last year, the top stories where those related to changing the status quo.  From OPC UA to using OPC in new, green applications to new integrator options.  Guess people do like change.

Green IT and OPC: Rest of the Story

OPC and Integrators

Field of Dreams?

Wind, Wind, Everywhere

Busting OPC UA Myths

If there are any topics in particular anyone wants to hear about, as always drop me a note.  We’ll see how the changes shape up, and what everyone thinks.

Well 2008 has come and gone. In many ways it has been a year of ups and downs in everything from the price of oil, elections, stock market and the weather. I would say the same holds true for OPC, with many successes and maybe a few shortfalls.  In 2008 we’ve seen OPC security gain a lot of attention, with new products and announcements yet industry is still has a way to go in terms of secure implementations.  OPC UA continues to gain momentum, with product releases and based on the OPC forum traffic, tons of users making use of the SDKs.  However I’m sure many out there are waiting with bated breath for the second round of specification releases and other distributables to come out.  The OPC user community also had some good successes this year, with new blogs appearing (of course the TAC blog too), many successful user conferences and road shows.  On the other side of the coin the feedback from many of these events tell us that people want to see some different things. I would predict a change in format for some of these get-togethers for 2009. (Speaking of which, mark you calendars for OPC User group in Houston on April 16^th)

Let’s hope 2009 brings bigger highs, without the lows.  Canada captured its fifth straight World Junior Hockey Championship gold last night, so I’m thinking the year is starting off on the right foot J

Let’s hear from you.  What do you think was the highest high for OPC in 2008?  The lowest low?  What are your predictions or wishes for 2009?