Seeking sources for factory automation and networking software that makes the bit, byte, collison avoidance, protocol arcana invisible, and yet supports the greatest number of protocols.
The most popular would be OPC. This is however a very platform dependant solution (WinTel platforms). The "invisiblity" of the different protocol's application layer is also dependant on the people who made the OPC server.
To date, I am unaware of any software that is totally abstracted from the underlying automation protocol and is platform independant.
You might consider having a custom control system written. I'm the lead engineer for embedded systems at Art & Logic (www.artlogic.com/es), and all of these requirements can be met with an embedded control system. Give me a call at 530.273.7381 if I can answer more questions.