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Amazon Web Services (AWS) Joins the OPC Foundation

March 11, 2021 by Stephanie Leonida

Amazon Web Services (AWS) becomes the OPC Foundation’s latest member and aims to provide extended cloud capabilities for manufacturers’ industrial operations.

Amazon has over 25 years of experience designing, manufacturing, and distributing smart products across its global network. The company strives to provide exceptional service through employing automation, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics. 

 

Video used courtesy of AWS

 

Additionally, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Inc., an Amazon.com, Inc. company, helps top-tier manufacturers enhance their manufacturing operations through its cloud solutions, along with enhanced security. Last month, AWS joined the Open Platform Communications (OPC) Foundation as its latest member. 

 

The OPC Foundation and OPC UA

The OPC interoperability standard is a series of specifications developed by industry vendors, end-users, and software developers. Overall, the standard ensures that data exchange from industrial automation and other industries is secure and reliable. The OPC Foundation is centered around developing and maintaining this standard. 

 

Siemens Uses AWS to Reduce Power Plant Alerts by 90%. Image used courtesy of AWS

 

As manufacturing systems grew and developed since OPC’s standard release in 1996, service-orientated structures started to come into use. This posed new challenges concerning security and data modeling. 

To tackle these challenges, the OPC Foundation developed the OPC unified architecture (UA) specifications. The OPC UA was released in 2008, and the platform stands as an independent service-oriented architecture. The platform integrates the functional capabilities of individual OPC Classic specifications into a single extensible framework.

 

AWS Adopts OPC UA

AWS implemented the OPC UA to address obstacles concerning data connectivity that manufacturers usually encounter by utilizing the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and transforming their operations to make way for Industry 4.0. By joining the OPC Foundation, AWS consolidates its commitment to providing improved data access and availability in the cloud and at the edge. 

AWS provides manufacturers with OPC UA-enabled tools and a portfolio of services that extend cloud capabilities for industrial operations. This allows manufacturers to take up OPC UA-based data from industrial assets using AWS IoT Greengrass connectors into AWS IoT SiteWise or their IIoT applications.

 

A chart showing how AWS SiteWise works

A chart showing how AWS’s IIoT solution SiteWise works. Image used courtesy of AWS 

 

In a news release, AWS stated their excitement to collaborate with industrial automation leaders, especially in data and innovation. In the same news release, the OPC Foundation welcomed AWS, complimenting how their cloud services advance control automation. The foundation continued to add AWS’s active participation in the foundation shows commitment to open standards-based data connectivity.

AWS has already worked with manufacturing companies such as Autodesk, Siemens, Georgia-Pacific, and Innovium. Learn more about how AWS plans to implement cloud and Smart Manufacturing on AWS’s website.