Welcome to the inaugural entry for OPC Exchange, the OPC Blog on Industrial Connectivity, OPC Users, and OPC Products. First off, let me tell you a little bit about who I am, and why I’ve started this OPC Blog. 

My name is Eric Murphy and I’ve been working in the Process Control industry for over 10 years.   My background is in Chemical Engineering, but I’ve spent most of my career on OPC and industrial software development.  . Some of you in the OPC community may know me from my role as the chair of the OPC HDA Working Group with the OPC Foundation. I also sit on some of the other OPC Foundation Working Groups, including the OPC UA Working Group, , OPC Complex Data and OPC A&E Working Groups, as well as the OPC Technical Steering Committee. I’ve held various roles over the years at MatrikonOPC, including OPC software developer, OPC Services Project Manager, Director of OPC Server Development, OPC R&D Manager, OPC Quality Assurance Manager, OPC Workshop Instructor and OPC Global Solutions Architect.  These roles all require you to keep up to date on the OPC specifications, what OPC products are available, and most importantly how and why OPC in used in industry today.

There are many excellent sites that give information on what OPC is, such as the OPC Foundation, OPC Programmers Connection, MatrikonOPC Tutorials and others.  There are many OPC Product vendors, and service providers, as well as OPC toolkit providers that give great information on their websites. The area I’ve always found lacking is a good resource on how and where OPC is being used in industry today. A trusted source to answer questions like; Who is using OPC and why? What are the best practices for implementing a robust OPC architecture?  Blogs are a great source, and there are blogs for everything from Accounting Software to Zen Buddhism.   Surprisingly, I couldn’t find one dedicated to OPC, so I decided to start one. So if you are looking for real information on OPC, and how it is used by the industrial automation world, this is the place to be!