Well, I didn’t keep up with the daily blogging.   Just too busy listening to the presentations (or giving presentations) and talking OPC with other folk who love industrial standardization!  This year’s DevCon had diverse group of attendees from about 20 countries from Scotland to Australia, Brazil to Japan and all points in between.   A broad range of business verticals was also represented.   Of course the usual suspects from the Industrial Automation and OPC vendors where present, as well as MES and ERP application vendors, and a good cross section of end-user companies covering auto manufacturing, Oil and Gas, Paper, Utilities.

Day 2 and 3 presentations had much more detail than some of  the earlier more introductory type topics.  There where talks on the what mechanisms OPC UA offers in terms of reliability and security.  More detailed information on the Access Type specifications, Alarms and Conditions, Historical Access and Programs.   The really ‘meaty’ talks gave details on implementing OPC UA clients, servers and the associated base framework.

Of course what technical conference would be complete without some exciting demos.  There where several prototype OPC UA server demos, included UA servers running on Embedded XP on a ControlLogix PLC,  examples of OPC UA access to EDDL information, as well as some cross-platform and cross language implementations.  There are a lot of people out there doing some interesting things with OPC UA product development.

The big question everyone keeps asking is “When can I get my hands on OPC UA products?”.  The short answer is there are many functional OPC UA products in the works already.  However, there are still several key things that need to come together before certified OPC UA products can begin shipping.   The final specification releases need to be completed, there are key software modules that need implementation and validation, as well as finalizing the base Profiles and getting the Independent Test labs set up.    (You can see the proposed timeline on the OPC Foundation site).  These are by and large parallel activities, and can be worked on simultaneously by several people.   Many hands make light work, and the more companies who volunteer the faster these deliverables will be hit.  There are a fair number of members on the Early Adopter team, but there is always room for more.

So, if you’re one of the vendors asking “So when will OPC UA be done?”, maybe a better question to be asking is “So, what can we do to help speed timeline for OPC UA adoption?”.  Anyone interested in joining the Early Adopter program should contact the Committee Chair,  Russell Tolsma, or drop me a line and I’ll be sure to get your contact info to Russ.