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Iconics reinforces OPC-UA commitment at ISA Expo

10/02/2007

Houston, Texas, ISA ‘07 - October 2 - Today, Iconics, a provider of Web-enabled, OPC-based, HMI/SCADA visualization and manufacturing intelligence software for Microsoft Windows operating systems, announced its ongoing commitment to the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC-UA) standard.

OPC-UA is a robust, secure and scalable expansion of the highly successful basic COM/DCOM-based OPC standard communication protocol. OPC-UA allows the interoperability of best-of-breed real-time, alarm management and historian systems. This allows for a standard model of plant floor integration with the enterprise. Any plant system that is currently using OPC communications can easily add OPC-UA applications to their existing system, giving them the added value of Web services that allow for more enterprise connectivity.

Iconics’ new GENESIS64 is “OPC-To-The-Core,” exemplifying the next generation of OPC Data Access, OPC Alarm and Events and OPC Historical Data Access. The built-in technology allows for secure, open connectivity from plants and facilities to the enterprise level.

Iconics is a charter member of the OPC foundation and plays a key role in assisting with the OPC-UA specification. ICONICS president and CEO Russ Agrusa is an OPC Foundation (www.opcfoundation.org) board member as well as the marketing chairman and director, leading the Foundation's efforts in marketing OPC technology and generating new members. ICONICS was first to introduce an OPC production-grade toolkit to the market, and more than 300 companies depend on Iconics for their OPC toolkit today.

“OPC-UA is an important building block in the development of our ‘next generation’ industrial automation software solutions,” said Agrusa.“Its benefits will be especially evident in future Iconics solutions.”

“The OPC Foundation’s Unified Architecture is a technology driven by the trend towards decentralization and interoperability”, said Craig Resnick, Research Director at ARC Advisory Group. “OPC recognizes the need for technology that suppliers such as Iconcis will employ in pursuit of universal, standardized and interoperable solutions, which provide a uniform, standards-based protocol for transparency, integration and a central view of all data and functions from the plant floor to the enterprise. OPC-UA is intended to provide the framework for moving information between applications in the enterprise space by taking the existing OPC specifications and tying them all together, leveraging web services as the key technology enabler in the new architecture.”