OPC UA for Cloud Initiative
As OPC UA is communication-protocol-independent, additional mappings to established communication protocol standards needed to be added to the specification for OPC UA PubSub, namely UDP for Field Level communication and MQTT for Cloud communication.
Major cloud suppliers, AWS, Google Cloud, IBM, Microsoft Azure, Siemens Mindsphere, SAP and Alibaba Cloud, committed to support OPC UA (PubSub over MQTT).
Cloud-related activities within the OPC Foundation:
1 – UA Cloud Library
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- Repository for OPC UA based information models (IMs): UA Cloud Library the world’s largest library of standardized IMs for the automation industry.
- Upload, store, search, download IMs from uacloudlibrary.opcfoundation.org
2 – Industrial Cloud Federation
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- Cloud to Cloud standardized communication leveraging OPC UA technology.
- Stakeholders involved: Service providers, Plant Operators, Field Level Asset Providers, Cloud Providers.
3 – DataSpace with Connectors
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- DataSpaces are an abstraction in data management that aims to solve problems encountered in data integration systems.
- OPC UA over MQTT guarantee access to standardized information.
4 – Asset –> Edge –> Cloud
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- Standardized communication: major cloud suppliers, Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Siemens, SAP and Alibaba, committed to support OPC UA (PubSub over MQTT).
- Field to Cloud / Cloud to Field
5 – OPC UA via REST Interface
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- Applications outside of the OPC UA ecosystem like Digital Twins, DataSpaces and the Metaverse can now access this information in a standardized way.
- Allows Filetransfer: OPC UA is already equipped with session-less services via RESTful interfaces.