Cloud library launched.

The OPC Foundation has announced the launch of the globally available UA Cloud Library co-developed with the Clean Energy and Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII). With its multi-cloud architecture, the UA Cloud Library saw contributions from all major cloud vendors leveraging open interfaces and is available for sharing, finding, and collaborating on OPC UA Information Models. The Library already contains over 65 OPC UA Information Models created by individual companies as well as international standards organizations like AutoID, DEXPI, MDIS, MTConnect, and over 30 VDMA working groups as part of their OPC UA Companion Specification work.

"The UA Cloud Library is the missing link that makes OPC UA information models available in the cloud on a global scale without requiring a connection to physical machines," said Erich Barnstedt, Chief Architect Standards & Consortia, Microsoft Corporation, and chair of the UA Cloud Library working group. "It enables OPC UA Information Models – used as blueprints for industrial digital twins - to be looked up and matched against time-series machine telemetry data provided by cloud-based analytics software, which is a common requirement in Industrial IoT projects."

The UA Cloud Library offers two standout benefits:

1. OPC UA information model access for applications
2. Ease of use of the entire OPC UA Companion Specification collection for end-users in general

While shop floor (OT) components routinely discover and use data structures and services of other OPC UA components, direct access to such semantic information has not been readily available to cloud-based applications due to security considerations. The UA Cloud Library eliminates this gap by providing IT and cloud-based applications access to semantic information directly from the cloud instead of manually getting it from the OT systems.

"It was an honor to partner with the OPC Foundation in this strategic initiative," said John Dyck, CEO of CESMII. "The UA Cloud Library is truly an important step on the journey to Smart Manufacturing Interoperability and will pave the way for dramatic simplification and cost savings for manufacturing systems!"

Stefan Hoppe, President and Executive Director of the OPC Foundation, said, "The value of what the OPC Foundation and CESMII joint working group created cannot be overstated because it equips us with the mechanism needed to facilitate access to all known OPC UA information models via an open, global, single-source of truth.

"Beyond the value the UA Cloud Library brings to applications, it will help with global OPC UA information model coordination and harmonization efforts by making it easy to search and cross-reference the latest OPC UA companion specifications in real-time. Finally, the UA Cloud Library will serve a crucial infrastructure role in Smart Manufacturing initiatives that depend on interoperability."

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Smart manufacturing move.

CESMII – The Smart Manufacturing Institute™ has added Microsoft to their ranks of partners and members. "Interoperability and innovation that can scale are essential for a more competitive and resilient manufacturing environment, and it’s a pleasure to welcome market leaders that embody these values to our Smart Manufacturing (SM) ecosystem. A relentless focus on these values is essential to achieving CESMII’s vision to accelerate the democratization of Smart Manufacturing."

Microsoft brings their thought leadership, standards advocacy and enabling technologies to our members and our SM Innovation Centers™ and will engage with other industry leaders to participate in their Standing Committees, adding their insights to the Technology, Business Practices, and Education and Workforce Development efforts driving this ecosystem forward.

“This is a pivotal time for CESMII,” states John Dyck, CEO of CESMII. “We are making great progress on many fronts, addressing the real challenges preventing manufacturers from accelerating their Smart Manufacturing and digital transformation initiatives. Our focus on enabling manufacturing system interoperability will have a dramatic impact on our energy productivity, sustainability, and competitiveness as a nation. A big part of that is defining and enabling the adoption of industry standards that will significantly reduce the cost and complexity of deploying Smart Manufacturing solutions. We’re pleased to see Microsoft take this step with us, advocating for standards, for interoperability, and creating a community of thought leaders that can truly transform this industry.”

“We strongly believe in standards, as exhibited by our work with CESMII on key OPC Foundation initiatives, and we appreciate that CESMII is addressing some of the great challenges preventing the adoption of digital transformation at scale,” says Sam George, corporate vice president of Azure IoT at Microsoft. “The focus on interoperability, openness, and the crowd-sourcing of information models for manufacturing assets is an essential accelerator for our mutual vision to accelerate the democratization of Smart Manufacturing,” continues George. “We’re pleased to engage with CESMII and their ecosystem as an enabling force in this industry, working broadly to bring real transformation to this industry.”

• Plattform Industrie 4.0 and CESMII announced their partnership to address similar challenges and needs related to Industrie 4.0 / Smart Manufacturing earlier this month: Industrie 4.0 and CESMII (14/4/2021)

@CESMII_SM @Azure @plattform_i40 #PAuto #Smart