Iconics and Kepware announce OPC-UA partnership

May 6, 2008

Foxborough, Mass., May 6 — Today, Iconics has announced an agreement with Kepware Technologies. The two companies have signed a partnership agreement to create the world’s first total end-to-end OPC-UA solution. The “Iconics OPC-UA KEPServer” integrates HMI/SCADA and visualization with a library of device connectivity from Kepware. This OPC-UA, 64-bit solution handles several different I/O devices and is certified for Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. The solution is truly OPC–UA–To-The-Core and uses web services technology, making it simple to integrate plant floor visualization with manufacturing intelligence and enterprise solutions.
 
“Iconics and Kepware have been working together for more than 10 years and have recently signed a partnership agreement to provide the first end-to-end OPC-UA solution,” said Russ Agrusa, President and CEO of Iconics. “Both our companies were instrumental in helping create the OPC-UA standard, and we are excited to be delivering products based on OPC-UA.”
 
Tom Burke, President of the OPC Foundation, said, “Iconics and Kepware are both leading developers of OPC Unified Architecture solutions, Both companies are pioneers in bringing OPC-UA from the theoretical into the physical and practical. This partnership agreement now makes OPC-UA a reality.”
 
According to Craig Resnick, Research Director, ARC Advisory Group, “OPC-UA is intended to expand the framework for moving information between applications in the enterprise space by taking the existing OPC specifications and integrating them all together, leveraging web services as the key technology enabler in the new architecture for deploying applications, such as asset management and true resource modeling that can utilize the OPC-UA specifications to move data and information.  This is why it is critical to manufacturers that any OPC-UA solution being implemented is sourced from partners who have extensive experience in deploying existing OPC solutions, which is certainly the case for both Iconics and Kepware.”