OPC is all about Openess, Productivity and Collaboration. It provides a standardized, manufacturer-independent access solution that ensures high-performance, state-of-the-art interoperability of automation components with control hardware and field devices. With an installed base of 20,000 products and millions of installations, OPC today is used in a vast variety of applications and industries. OPC was initially defined to provide a standardized solution for the frequently recurring task of interfacing PC-based applications to the process peripherals. OPC is all about Open Productivity & Connectivity. It provides a standardized, manufacturer-independent access solution that ensures high-performance, state-of-the-art interoperability of automation components with control hardware and field devices. With an installed base of 20,000 products and millions of installations, OPC today is used in a vast variety of applications and industries. OPC was initially defined to provide a standardized solution for the frequently recurring task of interfacing PC-based applications to the process peripherals. Visualization programs, process control systems, PC-based controllers, MES and ERP systems would be unthinkable today without an OPC interface.

OPC Unified Architecture is the OPC Foundation's new technology generation that allows the secure, reliable and manufacturer-independent transport of raw data and pre-processed information from the factory floor to the production planning or ERP system. OPC UA provides any desired information to any authorized application and person anytime and anywhere – in a reliable, standardized and secure way. This functionality is independent of the manufacturer that created the applications, the programming language they were developed in, and the operating system they run on. OPC UA complements the existing OPC industrial standard by adding essential new properties such as platform independence, scalability, high availability and Internet capability.

Softing has been a member of the OPC Foundation since 1997 and is actively represented in OPC Europe and the Technical Advisory Council (TAC).